From the article:
"Robert Stein made, in total, about $250,000 on Tetris. He could have made a great deal more, of course, but Stein had trouble getting Atari and Mirrorsoft to pay him royalties for the (bogus) rights he sold them....In 1996, with the financial backing of Henk Rogers, he [founder Pazhitnov] organized The Tetris Company LLC, and is now finally getting royalties for his creation."
I get annoyed anytime whenever I see "Best Videogames of all time" lists that don't put Tetris at the #1 spot. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Alexey Pazhitnov designed a second puzzle game after Tetris, this is my favorite implementation of it. http://www.popcap.com/games/bigmoney -- click play free online.