Blizzard sues Valve

@ Trav - Sure, that's the agreement that we each make with Blizzard. But the DOTA2 developers didn't enter into said agreement with Blizzard, they are simply coding a game based off another game which was made with Blizzard's Warcraft III map editor. They specifically are under no contract or agreement with Blizzard. Any agreement that Euls or Guinsoo or Icefrog entered into when they installed Warcraft 3 is between them and Blizzard, it does not include Valve.

So Blizzard now has to prove to a court that the "Ancients" in DOTA (which is not a word, it is an acronym) is specifically referring to Blizzard lore otherwise they have no case. Also, when Valve trademarked "DOTA', they did so as an actual word. So you now have Blizzard not only trying to prove that "ancients" is their IP, but they also have to prove that is what Valve was implying when they registered "DOTA" as a full word - NOT as an acronym and NOT as "Defence of the Ancients".

This is pretty much why it's such a huge problem - Because the Warcraft 3 map is "Defence of the ancients" and Blizzard owns the website dota-allstars.com which we know is an acronym for "defence of the ancients", but that is not what Valve trademarked. Valve trademarked DOTA as a full and complete word, not as an acronym.

Throw that in with the fact that almost nothing in DOTA2 looks the same, is called the same thing, or that the game even has the same name... And you're looking at a sketchy case at best for Blizzard. They absolutely do NOT have a "valid argument".

@ timebomb - I said what they're doing doesn't make sense, i wasn't talking about your post.

The fact remains that the DotA name is associated with Blizzard content, it's level design, heroes etc. Where mods like Counter Strike included a lot of new and original content, DotA has very little of this. The game is still very much WC3. This is not just using the engine to create a game, this is using the game and introducing a new way of playing it.

With flash, Adobe created the foundation, but the content is completely original.


So no matter how you look at it, Dota is very much WC3.
While no one is denying that Dota 2 is a new game with new designs etc, the name is instantly linked to Blizzard content.

Valve are complete Aholes for trying to copyright it, plan and simple. Frankly it's now a genre more than any one game, and a company should not own the entire genre. It would be like me trademarking mmorpg. As soon as I got it I could effectively block any mmorpg, because make no mistake valve will happily block other dota games.

This isn't about Blizz wanting to own the trademark for themselves, because frankly they could have done that as soon as dota became popular. In this instance Blizz have the high moral ground, they don't want anyone to own it thus letting innovation happen.


Oh and the creators of the mod have no legal leg to stand on. They don't own anything, as soon as you agree to releasing a mod Blizz own it. It's been like that for a long, long time. It's probably the main reason Blizz lets people mod their games tbh, they let players use their engine while taking the rights to the mod itself (originally I think it was so people couldn't charge for mods btw).

So yeah, Blizz own DOTA, the same, the game, and the entire intellectual property. If they wanted I'd bet they could quite easily shut down LoL and HoA, let alone DOTA2, but they don't want to do that as it would make them seem like pricks. But trying to steal the name? Yeah, I'm well on the side of Blizz on this, and frankly every gamer should be too.

1, Any mod is not the legal right of the origanal game/company unless created in agreement with the developers and game/company.

2, IceFrong being the lead owner of DOTA has right to claim the name. Why he was not the creator as the video clearly states ownership was passed to him there for giving him legal right.

3, Blizzard have no right to the name as a mod is not legally owned by the game/company it was created for or used as a platform to run on.

4, Dragon owns no right as they gave up any form of co ownership that was possible to use a legal battle when they gave up working with the dota community owned by icefrog.

There for,
Due to the fact that the name is a mod developed and owned by IceFrog he has full legal rights in regard to how the name is used there for giving valve rights if agreed by icefrog. The only person who can legally argue with this the origanal creator of the dota mod but it is proven and can be found easily via google that he gave up all ownership when he passed on the mod to the next lead developer.

I highly doubt valve will lose as unless blizzard or dragon can prove that they have any legal right to the name of DOTA they have no case. And I will aslo remember that if you watch the video it is clearly said the name DOTA was created by the fans there for meaning no legal corperation held rights to the name. This means legally DOTA is unregistered and well in the law no other company has ever claimed rights to it so valve have every legal right. Also no other stand alone game is called DOTA.

----
Or to make it simple,

Mental quits ragezone and passes its development and ownership to Lee.
Lee now legally owned Ragezone and all legal responsibility for it.
Mental there for can not return 5 years later say ragezone belongs to me give me it or I wil sue you.

Blizzard aren't trying to trademark DoTA for themselves, they're trying to keep it in the public domain as it has been for the last 7 years. Valve made a douchebag move by trying to trademark it, thus preventing any other company/individual from using the term DoTA.

Valve knew the name was public domain before they decided to call their new game DoTA 2, so they can't really cry about it now can they. Blizzard are sticking up for the little man here.

Since blizzard making it's own "Blizzard Dota", I believe that is the reason why they not letting Valve have the name. :huh:

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Originally Posted by DonTonberry

Blizzard aren't trying to trademark DoTA for themselves, they're trying to keep it in the public domain as it has been for the last 7 years. Valve made a douchebag move by trying to trademark it, thus preventing any other company/individual from using the term DoTA.

Valve knew the name was public domain before they decided to call their new game DoTA 2, so they can't really cry about it now can they. Blizzard are sticking up for the little man here.

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Ok,
Please explain how the name is public domain.

What is Dota,
Dota is a game mod for world of warcraft that is owned and developed by icefrog a valve employee. Dota is shorthand for Defence Of The Ancients.

Genre,
DOTA is not a genre of game such as FPS, RPG, MMO. An example would be League Of Ledgends, This game would not be classed as a DOTA game nor would it be placed in any genre under the name of DOTA. It would be placed as an RTS or aRTS.

Due to the fact that DOTA is owned and developed by icefrog under the full name of Defence of The Ancients the term DOTA simply means Defence of the Ancients. Any attempt to use it as a genre would be incorrect. This means that DOTA is not public domain as some may assume as it has no releavence outside of Defence Of The Ancients and to use it in regard to any other content would incorrect.


In the end,
Valve is not likely to lose unless you can prove that DOTA stands for or means anything else other than Defence Of The Ancients. Something that you will find impossible to do legally.

It was public domain because the name could be used without impunity, Blizzard stated this was as they wanted it so the community could continue to use the term DoTA for mods etc.

Icefrog DID NOT create DoTA, he merely took over the project sometime after its inception. DoTA isn't an RTS either, it's what is called a MOBA - Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Neither was it developed for "World of WarCraft, it was developed for WarCraft III using the Map Editor supplied with the game. On a side note the EULA for using said Map Editor makes the mod and all terms associated with it technically Blizzards but we'll put that to one side for the moment.

If Blizzard was being greedy, they'd have trademarked the name long ago and prohibited Valve from naming their game DoTA 2, which they didn't. They have only acted now to BLOCK the trademarking of the name DoTA by Valve so that it can continue to be used by the community. Valve are being greedy in trying to take a term that is considered public domain and trademarking it for profit.

Calling the game DoTA 2 was ok with Blizzard, but stopping other people (including Blizzard) from using the term is not.

Blizzard I believe will be successful with this blocking motion, and I really hope they are. Valve are being greedy and taking what was once a community project and milking it for all its worth.

I don't see the point in this either. Like you said, they are just being greedy and want to cash in on the name.

Valve should have just used a new name, I mean why didn't they anyway, look at LoL and HoN, these are well known games and extremely popular. They didn't need to give themselves DotA names.

And while MOBA is the proper name for the genre, many people still speak about DotA for the whole genre, which does make sense to a certain part, since DotA created the genre.

In the end, like been said in this topic before. Blizzard doesn't want the name for themselves, the just want the name to be usable for whoever wants to use it, including Valve.

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Originally Posted by KiddRiu

1, Any mod is not the legal right of the origanal game/company unless created in agreement with the developers and game/company.

2, IceFrong being the lead owner of DOTA has right to claim the name. Why he was not the creator as the video clearly states ownership was passed to him there for giving him legal right.

3, Blizzard have no right to the name as a mod is not legally owned by the game/company it was created for or used as a platform to run on.

4, Dragon owns no right as they gave up any form of co ownership that was possible to use a legal battle when they gave up working with the dota community owned by icefrog.

There for,
Due to the fact that the name is a mod developed and owned by IceFrog he has full legal rights in regard to how the name is used there for giving valve rights if agreed by icefrog. The only person who can legally argue with this the origanal creator of the dota mod but it is proven and can be found easily via google that he gave up all ownership when he passed on the mod to the next lead developer.

I highly doubt valve will lose as unless blizzard or dragon can prove that they have any legal right to the name of DOTA they have no case. And I will aslo remember that if you watch the video it is clearly said the name DOTA was created by the fans there for meaning no legal corperation held rights to the name. This means legally DOTA is unregistered and well in the law no other company has ever claimed rights to it so valve have every legal right. Also no other stand alone game is called DOTA.

----
Or to make it simple,

Mental quits ragezone and passes its development and ownership to Lee.
Lee now legally owned Ragezone and all legal responsibility for it.
Mental there for can not return 5 years later say ragezone belongs to me give me it or I wil sue you.

---

Point 1 is wrong. Blizzard own any mod you make for their games. It becomes their intellectual property the moment you upload it to their servers, and likely they could argue as soon as you start development using their engine code.

This is done to stop any mod makers trying to sell their mods, and thus profit off Blizzards engine.

Seriously do you guys not realise game engines cost fuck loads to buy? Blizzard were basically giving a couple ks worth of software to every mod maker. Of course they own the rights to everything you make from it. If you want to own the commercial rights to an engine, you need to pay for it.

To put it into perspective, unreal engine 3 costs $100 and 25% of the profits. DoTA devs paid nothing, because they paid with the rights to the game.

There's 2 types of people here -

1. The people who have either never played DOTA or don't play it actively, and think Blizzard is trying to keep "DOTA" as being public domain. You stand for open development and a public community ownership, but fail to realize that someone, somewhere, is going to cash in on a completely free and open community of over 3 million players.

2. The people who actually DO play DOTA and have been waiting for the past 5 years for a reputable company to actually make a decent standalone version of the game. We are glad that Valve is developing the game and that IceFrog is working with them to make this game just as god as the original, but it is blatantly obvious that Blizzard has been working for a while now on getting that "DOTA" trademark from Valve.

Lets also not forget that Activision owns Blizzard now. Blizzard may have had the moral high-ground a few year ago, but right now it's just Activision trying to cash in on something blizzard was quite happy to let slide for the sake of the community.

I don't know a damned thing about the War3 map editor however, if it's anything like Valve's Source map editor, anything made using it (Minus textures specifically copywritten) are the sole intellectual property of the developer. They hold no rights whatsoever over what is created using their editor. This is fact as verified by Valve back when I made maps.

If that holds true with War3, I feel Blizzard really shouldn't be able to claim jack shit from DoTA, being they did not make the concept, they did not develop it, they did not offer support and they did not market it.

Being that Guinsoo handed down DoTA to IceFrog and IceFrog now works for Valve on the creation of DoTA2, Valve has more right to the DoTA name than Blizzard. But in the end, IceFrog actually holds more rights than anyone.

Even if they didn't, I would still rather the DoTA name being aligned with Valve over Blizzard. Blizzard destroys everything eventually. Also Valve trademarked "Dota" as a whole name and not "DoTA" or "Defense of the Ancients."

Honestly I think it's a little ridiculous that Blizzard acquires DoTA-Allstars then goes on to counter the trademark as if they ever had any right to the name.

To those who argue that because it was made on the War3 platform, which was created by Blizzard, then Blizzard holds all rights. That's bullshit. That's similar to if I were to market a program I wrote in Visual Studio, Microsoft could sue me claiming that since it was written on their IDE, they hold all rights. Which is just not true. Sure, in this context it goes from a program packaged with a $10 game to a program written for well over 10 years and millions spent on it that I purchased a license on for up to $3,800 but the basis is not there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rishwin

There's 2 types of people here -

1. The people who have either never played DOTA or don't play it actively, and think Blizzard is trying to keep "DOTA" as being public domain. You stand for open development and a public community ownership, but fail to realize that someone, somewhere, is going to cash in on a completely free and open community of over 3 million players.

2. The people who actually DO play DOTA and have been waiting for the past 5 years for a reputable company to actually make a decent standalone version of the game. We are glad that Valve is developing the game and that IceFrog is working with them to make this game just as god as the original, but it is blatantly obvious that Blizzard has been working for a while now on getting that "DOTA" trademark from Valve.

Lets also not forget that Activision owns Blizzard now. Blizzard may have had the moral high-ground a few year ago, but right now it's just Activision trying to cash in on something blizzard was quite happy to let slide for the sake of the community.

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1

LoL, HoN, indirect sales of War3, probably a ton more smaller ones, they are all profiting off it. It doesn't mean DoTA being open dev is a bad thing, hell if blizzard had copyrighted it straight off the bat non of these other games would have been created. It fostered innovation.

2

There's already a few DoTA games around. Clearly you havent actually tried LoL or HoN if you think valve are the only ones making this type of game


Just because a company is out to get money (which pretty much all of them are) doesn't mean they can't be on right on this. I'd be the first to call Blizz out on their dick moves. Don't get me started on the bastardisation of WoW, or the dev time of d3. The whole paid extras wow has piss me off beyond belief, and the cash shop takes the piss.

But valve are exactly the same. No one should own the copyright, so no one can be sued. It's blatant the first thing valve would do with the copyright is shut down DoTA on war3 and kill any dev work blizz might be doing to make their own expansion on it. Killing innovation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rishwin

There's 2 types of people here -

1. The people who have either never played DOTA or don't play it actively, and think Blizzard is trying to keep "DOTA" as being public domain. You stand for open development and a public community ownership, but fail to realize that someone, somewhere, is going to cash in on a completely free and open community of over 3 million players.

2. The people who actually DO play DOTA and have been waiting for the past 5 years for a reputable company to actually make a decent standalone version of the game. We are glad that Valve is developing the game and that IceFrog is working with them to make this game just as god as the original, but it is blatantly obvious that Blizzard has been working for a while now on getting that "DOTA" trademark from Valve.

Lets also not forget that Activision owns Blizzard now. Blizzard may have had the moral high-ground a few year ago, but right now it's just Activision trying to cash in on something blizzard was quite happy to let slide for the sake of the community.

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No one is saying that they shouldn't cash in. No one is saying DotA 2 shouldn't be made. What is being said here is that the rights to DotA name, shouldn't be anyones.

I think it's great that DotA 2 is being developed, same thing for the development in LoL, HoN, Blizzard DotA and various other lesser known ones. It's the gamer that will get the best game because of it.
However that has absolutely nothing to do with getting the rights to those 4 letters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Robert

1

LoL, HoN, indirect sales of War3, probably a ton more smaller ones, they are all profiting off it. It doesn't mean DoTA being open dev is a bad thing, hell if blizzard had copyrighted it straight off the bat non of these other games would have been created. It fostered innovation.

2

There's already a few DoTA games around. Clearly you havent actually tried LoL or HoN if you think valve are the only ones making this type of game


Just because a company is out to get money (which pretty much all of them are) doesn't mean they can't be on right on this. I'd be the first to call Blizz out on their dick moves. Don't get me started on the bastardisation of WoW, or the dev time of d3. The whole paid extras wow has piss me off beyond belief, and the cash shop takes the piss.

But valve are exactly the same. No one should own the copyright, so no one can be sued. It's blatant the first thing valve would do with the copyright is shut down DoTA on war3 and kill any dev work blizz might be doing to make their own expansion on it. Killing innovation.

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Robert are you stupid? [edited because some people can not understand how to read a word in context]
DOTA is the name of a game mod. It is not a genre so when you say there are DOTA games around you are trying to place them into a genre under the name of DOTA that does not and has never exisisted.

Next,
No company/developer can own copyright of a mod created by somebody else. It is the property of the person who developed it. Or are you going to tell me every webdesign I ever created is owned by adobe because I use photoshop? Really learn wtf your talking about. And yes that is exactly what your saying.

Valve already own the trademark DOTA,
Go and look at any content in regard to dota2. Even on the offical website for dota 2 it clearly states that DOTA is registered or trademarked.

Now to your idea of innovations,
Valve are trying to copyright the name DOTA [Defence Of The Ancients] not the genre this game comes into. This would not stop other games similar such as League of ledgends. Also how is it innovation to create a games based on a mod?

Next is icefrog legally owns Defence Of The Ancients AKA DOTA. There for he already owns all legally rights. And as I stated before the creator gave up all legal consent to DOTA when he left. Remember is a lawsuit would have been made against Defence of The Ancients who do you think would be in the firing line? It would be icefrog as he is the legal owner of the mod the game is created from.

Overall,
DOTA is NOT GENRE IT IS THE SHORTHAND OF A GAME MODS NAME. Learn this and then speak otherwise your talking out of your rear end.

ps.
Google DOTA and tell what page you get to before DOTA does not come up content relating to the mod Defence Of The Ancients :glare:. Really go on Dota on any search engine brings up Defence Of The Ancients EVERY TIME.