Yes it would, a big one. Even Valve have gone on the record stating they didn't take DotA, they took DOTA. People familiar with it would find this funny because it's like calling an rts game RTS 2. But whatever, I doubt there's many gamers into it that much to know.

I hope blizzard win. Only becuase I dislike valve. I dont care about DTOA at all.

Just like the majority of its Warcraft community, Blizzard are a bunch of entitled whiny punks.

Boohoo. Corporations never cease to sue each other on claim rights.

I'm very interested to see how this turns out.

Reading Blizzards http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91202572&pty=OPP&eno=1, I first thought that the warcraft III world editor had an EULA that wouldn't necessarily prevent someone other then Blizzard from acquiring the rights to the dota trademark. But then in the end it states that Blizzard bought the rights to the "dota mods" in 2011 (edit: while Valve filed for the dota trademark in 2010). Then to complicate things even further, they bought it from riot games which in turn bought the rights from two people who worked on dota. The third person who worked on dota however now works for Valve.

There are too many variables and unknowns for me to see how this is going to end. I do have one question that someone here is probably able to answer: Am I correct in assuming that dota relies heavily on assets (in hero-names and textures ect.) that belong in the base Warcraft III game? And if so, is Valve recreating this image in dota 2?

AFAIK, DotA was the first game of the type now known as "tower defense". DotA itself is not a genre, just the trendsetter.

since names, ideas, and stories should belong to the individual who thought them up and not the company's editing tools who they used them in i'd have to side with valve on this

in case someone misunderstands me, names, ideas, and stories are easily written without the use of editing tools provided by anyone

Over time people will stop refering to these games as "DOTAs" just as people stopped calling first person shooters "Doom clones".

Yes but DOTA is adapted from not only Blizzard IP, but from a storyline and game series they created, just because they dont wish to develop it doesnt mean that other companies can jump in their grave, Blizzard are good enough to not cry foul over people who want to make mods of thier work as long as they arent making money from their IP, but this is another company taking something that they let someone mod and wanting to make a profit off, this only makes companies then withdraw rights to players to have fun with the products they purchase by modding them without ending up in court, see Games Workshop, if you, sued, if you, sued, if you sued and so on.

Cool. I am going to convince the creators of Kung Fu Panda and Panda Express to sue Blizzard now. See you folks later.

pandaran monks have 5 or 6 years on kung fu panda, and panda express is just a restaurant with a panda on the sign

Wonder what acronym they'll try to trademark next as a word.

"WoW, just WoW."

I can agree to this.

Isn't League of Legends a DOTA? I'm confused. So DOTA is just a mod, not a genre? Then what's the genre? Action RTS?

It kinda became a genre, but the name DotA was never used except for in the mod.

It's such a new genre there hasn't really been one chosen name for it. I've seen people call it "Dota" style games or Action RTS, and some weird ones I can't remember. Though those are less common as the months go by. It originally came form the actual game called DotA (Defense of the Ancients). Except at the time it was such a huge cult phenomenon any other clone was a "dota clone". So hence many refer to them as DOTA style games. DotA refers to the mod itself. Dota, DOTA, dota or any variants refers to the genre as a whole (usually).

http://imgur.com/NfdLF.jpg, and the US legal system. I'll expect this to be settled in about a thousand years.

So, I'm getting the Funnyjunk homepage, which is cool, but it doesn't really tell me anything.

The genre itself is called MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, of which DotA was the first game so many people know it by that name.

Bah, worked this morning. Hopefully fixed now.

It works, nice.

We do not allow ongoing lawsuits that Bethesda is involved in to be discussed on the forums. Several threads about the Scrolls dispute between Bethesda and Mojang have been removed.

While not against the rules, I'll point out that "I want XYZ to win because I dislike ABC" is a poor way to settle such things, and it would probably be best to keep this discussion more productive.