http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-10-blizzard-legally-opposes-valves-dota-trademark-application

Not that I think Blizzard will actually win, but if they do it makes you wonder about what kind of precedent will be set. Would that mean id Software could go after Valve for Team Fortress?

Wow really, during them over a game they abandoned.

Realy mature Blizard, real mature.

Also about TF, the original TF was a mod, the. Developed into a retail then evolved into tf2.

So, Kotick wants to crush the competition? No suprise there.

Besides, Blizzard didn't do anything with DOTA, they just don't want people playing a game they aren't selling.

I'll go with Blizz on this one unless Valve hired the original DOTA map creators to develop their DOTA.

Under the EULA, any user created content belongs to Blizzard IP. DOTA should change its name, just like LoL.

I honestly don't have an opinion on this as DOTA II is the one Valve game I don't care about.

Well blizzard could be making a DOTA game and its only 3 years into its 10 year development.

So, Valve Time < Blizzard Time?

So what's DOTA please?

If you know.

Cheers

Az

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients

This court case will be interesting, as it concerns the nature of mods to video games as derivative works.

Valve like to get their hands on MODs and turn them into full on games.

That's where "Left 4 Dead" came from.

The guys who made the MOD apparently didn't get paid.

Of course I've only read this on the interweb so who knows how much truth there is to it.

Cheers for the link.

Az

Never heard anything like that. As far as I know, Turtle Rock studios was developing left 4 dead, (having announced it in 2006) but got acquired by valve during development.

Are you thinking of Counter Strike?

Assuming for a sec that the Grand moff is thinking of counter strike:

The difference between this situation and counter strike is that counter strike was a mod for one of Valve's games, while DOTA is a mod for one of Blizzard's games.

Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, Left 4 Dead, Portal and Alien Swarm were all mods at one point. Some of them for other, non-Valve games like Quake and Unreal Tournament 2004. Many founding members of Valve came from a modding background and this has persisted as the company has grown. The whole DOTA thing is par for the course for them, and Blizzard are the first to raise a fuzz about it.

That's tough. Trademark law is awful stuff, and if Valve obtained the DOTA trademark I could see this complicating matters for the WC3 mod and its community. It seems perfectly reasonable that Blizzard wants to cover their butts here, although hopefully it can be sorted out in such a way that Blizzard is protected and Valve can obtain the trademark.

IceFrog is working with Valve on the project. Steve Feak isn't, but if he's opposed to Valve's DOTA 2 I'm not aware of it.

The situation with Valve and Turtle Rock was weird, but I find it hard to believe the TRS devs never got paid.

While Left 4 Dead uses the source engine, as far as I'm aware it was never a mod, but a game originally under development at Turtle Rock studios that Valve got the rights to when it acquired the developer. And out of that list, I think only alien swarm was originally a mod for a non-valve game.

In that case I think they should be able to call it DOTA 2. However, when I did first hear of it I thought Blizz had licensed it out to Valve. I knew Blizz wasn't developing it and knew they didn't develop DOTA 1 either but I still viewed it as related to Blizz.

Tricky tricky. If Valve can better separate it from Blizzard and if Blizz doesn't want to pursue their own DOTA sequel then Valve gets my vote.

Pfft, covering themselves my ass. They have their own late comer DTOA style game coming along. This is just a cheap trick to try and shut down the competition. Now if Blizzard had from the start or even middle, or some significant amount of time fostered the development of the mod and its community I would side with them. As it is, they've had their chance. They didn't defend it, and now they see the cash cow they want in. Valve is just scooping up the current lead designer (though not original creator) of DOTA and is having him work on it.

Personally I don't think any company can really claim to own DOTA, it's not a copyright thing anymore. It's more of a concept or style of game. Like RTS, FPS, or MMO. I seriously doubt this will happen though, but if it was an option it would be mine.

I honestly hope Blizzard [snip] them. A) Blizzard owns the name DOTA as it was created within WC3 B ) Valve needs to get kicked in the face because of their adversion to 3.

No, dota (should) belong(s) to the devs of dota.

Personally I hope valve wins this case and turns around suing the pants of Blizzard for wasting their time. Personally I have a lot more respect for valve than I do for Blizzard after that BS stunt they pulled with that guy making the SCII mod.

The problem now lies on who gets to publish DOTA style games once the trademark ownership is decided. Are the mod communities under WC 3 and SC forbidden to create any more DOTA if Valve won? Would handing it to Valve be any different when they tried to shut down their own competitors? I'm with Blizzard in this. The modding community has established, passing it up to another hand will make things really ugly.

Yeah, this. Or perhaps someone should simply make another name out of it, like what Riot did.

The mod is DotA (an acronym for Defense of the Ancients) and the game is called Dota 2 (not an acronym, the actual name of the game). Would that make a difference in court?