Blizzard sues Valve

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Originally Posted by KiddRiu

Robert you are a moron,
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.

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I'd call LoL and HoN both Dota games, so sue me (though valve probably would try it!) this is what it is. Dota created a new genre of games, exactly the same way tower defence did. Sure they are now trying to retroactively classify them as aRPGs and shit, but that's mainly because you can't copyright a household name.


Many companys own the rights to stuff someone else developed. That's exactly what valve is trying to do now really, take the work that blizzard did to create the war3 engine which was used to make dota to make their own game.

If you paid for Adobe, then it is yours. That is why commercial licenses for software exist. Have you never noticed how there is a microsoft office version for home and student? Because that is sold as not for profit, if you use it to make money you are breaking the license. If you get a free/cheap version of Adobe and the license says you can't use it for commercial services, then no you don't own your webdesigns.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Using the war3 engine might seem free, but it isn't. Blizz own the rights to it. Not long back there was a big commotion between all the wow mod developers and blizz because of it, mainly because some devs started to sell mods they made.

Just because you make something doesn't mean it is yours if you have used other peoples tools. Hell even programming languages have license agreements, though they normally say do what you want with it but it's not our fault if it fucks your pc up.

We know Dota has already been stolen by Valve, and now Blizzard are trying to claim it back for the public. That is the entire point of the arguement, they shouldn't be allowed to trademark it, use it fair enough but not allowed to take it out of the publics domain.

If I wanted to make a Dota clone for sc2, I should be allowed to call it RobDOTA or whatever the hell I want to call it. That is how it is identified to most people. Likely LoL and HoN would have used the name Dota too but they probably were worried Blizz would sue them for it, lol.

Icefrog, nor the original creator (who would have more legal right than icefrog tbh as he signed the game away to blizz) own DOTA. This is where you are getting confused. It was made using Blizzards property which they didn't pay for and afaik blizzard never gave them the rights to call it their property. It is for the copyright owner (blizz) to give away rights to their engine, not for the dev to steal it from them.

Oh wow. You begging for a ban or something?

Photoshop is a paid product used to create new and original designs. DotA is a mod made with Blizzard owned tools, graphics, engine etc with which developers agree with when they use that what Blizzard offers them to create a mod. It's completely different and it makes you a moron for thinking they are the same thing.

While DotA is not a genre, it now stands for a type of game. More people know what DotA is then what MOBA is. In the end they are just names the community give anyway. I mean the term MOBA was created by Riot (LoL).

Icefrog might have played a (big) role in the creation of DotA, but he hardly owns it. It was created completely with Blizzard tools. Not to mention that the creation of heroes, adding of items on those heroes etc etc are all Blizzard's.

In the end, Icefrog owns shit, Blizzard does own various parts while other parts don't have a owner.

As for the infraction it can kiss my ass,
There is no rule about insulting staff being against the rules. Also calling him a moron is not an insult its like me saying are you stupid? If that was true then gohan should recieve an infraction also and about the other 10000 people who commonly speak in this mannor.

The only rule about staff in regard to this is
Do not make personal attacks against staff members, they are here to help.

And last time I checked having a heated discussion is not a personal attack. If I had said as an example "Robert your a fucking moron who is not capable of doing your job and you should quit" Now that would be classed as a personal attack as I am personally attacking his role in the community where as the term moron in the context I use it is used in regard to an opinon related reply he has not him personally.
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Also if robert had an issue I am sure as hell he would have told me where to stick it like he normally does :tongue:


Any way the infraction is just retarded and next time If a staff has an issue I would atleast like the staff member I so called made a personal attack against to be the one to issue the warning rather than some one with no involvment making a random choice. Remember I dont read any where in roberts reply that he found it offensive nor took it as a personal attack.

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Now back onto topic,
Why the idea the DOTA may be a genre is valid the fact is still true that DOTA is and has always been a shorthand for Defence Of The Ancients. All I am saying is unless blizzard can prove that DOTA means any thing accept Defence Of Ancients the they have no case to claim public domain. It is the same as WWE, RBS and many other companies who legally own the rights to the shorthand of there name.

Still do I think it is abit wierd well yes. I would have suspected they would have attempted this before they released Dota2 not after. Still maybe valve also thought the name was public domain but after research and legal advice they where told there is no legal reason they can not . Remember I doubt valve are dumb anoth to take on a battle they have no legal stand on. Remember this is a company that was made succesful in purchasing the rights to oldgames/mods of games and recreating in there own engine. They do have some knowledge im sure.

For a start the insulted mod isn't supposed to deal with it themselves, and frankly I couldn't give a flying fuck what you think of me. The problem is when one person is disrespectful and isn't punished, it can lead to a complete breakdown in respect to staff members. Disagree with me all you like, but leave out the name calling.

What are you on about DOTA meaning something else? It means Defence of the Ancients, which Blizz owns the intellectual property rights. Like I said, if you dev on Blizzards engine, it becomes theirs. You aren't paying for that software with money, you are paying with waived rights.

As for why it is happening now, it's because valve is trying to steal the name away from Blizzard. By all means they should be allowed to call it DotA2, but they shouldn't be allowed to claim sole rights to the name.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a random legal department person who registered the name without having any idea of the history of the game. And with most companies they will defend themselves to ridiculous lengths. If Valve came out and said yes we trademarked the name but anyone else can use it for mods etc, then fair enough. I just see them instantly deciding to try shut down DotA on blizz.net as soon as it is released, because that is the type of BS companies pull when they get naming rights.

You obviously never read the forum rules: Do not make personal attacks against staff members, they are here to help.

You called him a moron while he was simply arguing his point.
Regardless as how you see it, there was no reason at all to call him that, he did not insult or flame you in any kind of way, hell the post you quoted was aimed at Rishwin, who did not insult either.


While DotA does stand for Defense of the Ancients, it's still their mod best known as DotA and the use of DotA 2 is obviously as a sequel to a Blizzard owned mod.

In the end, Blizzard never tried, and still doesn't, to get the name registered to them, they are merely saying that Valve shouldn't hold the rights.

Dota is a genre of video games, such as FPS,RTS, RPG. to copyright a genre is ridiculous. It would be like ID software trying to copyright First person Shooters.

I keep seeing people mentioning the 'fact' that DOTA was produced on WC3's editor, therefore making it Blizzard's, which is total bull. The use of everything within the editor belongs to Blizzard, i.e. - the usage of Textures, Models, etc... premade things that someone else has made within Blizz. Blizzard DOES NOT own the CONCEPT of the map the author of said map has done. IceFrog, and therefore Valve, have carried on building this concept with DOTA2.

Otherwise, and I love how everyone ignored this that I mentioned in my first post, questionable maps with discriminable content is also owned by Blizzard? Do you honestly believe Blizzard would back such a claim ? Else they'd be eligible to getting sued for, example, that map posted by someone that's objectives was to "kill as many muslims" as possible.

Do you honestly believe that ?

As dickish of a move as it may be by Valve, they've got every right to register the name DOTA[2]... like what they've already done with Team Fortress, and Counter Strike. Though for this to not end up nasty on both parties, Valve SHOULD be amicable with the name's usage.

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Originally Posted by LightWarrior

Dota is a genre of video games, such as FPS,RTS, RPG. to copyright a genre is ridiculous. It would be like ID software trying to copyright First person Shooters.

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Shows what you know... DOTA is from a genre called MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which originated from Aeon of Strife in SC1 from what I know... or an action based RTS, or aRTS [which sounds silly...].

Ergo, DOTA =/= a genre.

DotA is not exactly a genre though. It was the first in it's kind, while a lot of people call LoL, HoN etc a DotA game, it's not really.

Think about all other genres, the name tells you what game it is, FPS is First Person Shooter, RTS is Real Time Strategy, MMO is Massive Multiplayer Online etc, all of them tells you something about the game. DotA tells you nothing, except that if you know the game, you know what genre you are talking about.

The same thing was with GTA (especially 3), when games such as Saints Row came out, it was called a GTA clone and all that. There was no name for it yet.
Now these games need to find their own genre name.

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Originally Posted by GohanSSJ

DotA is not exactly a genre though. It was the first in it's kind, while a lot of people call LoL, HoN etc a DotA game, it's not really.

Think about all other genres, the name tells you what game it is, FPS is First Person Shooter, RTS is Real Time Strategy, MMO is Massive Multiplayer Online etc, all of them tells you something about the game. DotA tells you nothing, except that if you know the game, you know what genre you are talking about.

The same thing was with GTA (especially 3), when games such as Saints Row came out, it was called a GTA clone and all that. There was no name for it yet.
Now these games need to find their own genre name.

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Those types of games are called Sandbox/Open Realm/Free-Roam etc, it's just that GTA was the "first" and most popular one. As for League of Legends, I doubt half the player base even knew what DOTA is, until Valve came along.

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Originally Posted by Robert

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

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Care to explain? I'm no law expert but I'm fairly sure that just because LoL shares some similar features to DOTA it doesn't give Blizzard the right to shut it down. Despite being the same genre (dota/moba/arts/whatever) it is an extremely different game to DotA. I know little about HoN so it might be possible if item/hero names etc are copied over. As for DOTA 2 I know Valve have gone to extensive lengths to avoid similarities to Blizzard's product while attempting to keep it the same as the original. Item & skill names the 'ancients' & character skins being remodelled to avoid the typical Blizzard character archetype (Vol'Jin becoming Witch Doctor and whatnot).

Regardless of whoever wins this case I doubt it will change much... DOTA 2 will become fairly successful in Europe and probably China/some other parts of Asia, League of Legends will remain extremely popular around the world, HoN already committed suicide and Blizzard DOTA will probably hold interest for a while then fall into decline.

I know what they are called. My point is that people called it GTA clones for a long time even though the genre had a name. In this case we got a genre that does not have a 'official' name yet. Now while DotA is not the right name, there isn't any other name that will make people go "ah, that kind of game".

Imagine you creating a game based on this principle and you would have to advertise it? How would you advertise it? In a sense this is what Blizzard is doing. They are making their own game called Blizzard DotA, yet the DotA name is owned by Valve, even though they did not make the game, nor do they hold the rights to the game.

As for Valve doing their best to make the game different. They seemed to have forgotten about 1 thing. The name which indicates it's a sequel to the game they don't want to look too much alike.

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Originally Posted by Daedius

I keep seeing people mentioning the 'fact' that DOTA was produced on WC3's editor, therefore making it Blizzard's, which is total bull. The use of everything within the editor belongs to Blizzard, i.e. - the usage of Textures, Models, etc... premade things that someone else has made within Blizz. Blizzard DOES NOT own the CONCEPT of the map the author of said map has done. IceFrog, and therefore Valve, have carried on building this concept with DOTA2.

Otherwise, and I love how everyone ignored this that I mentioned in my first post, questionable maps with discriminable content is also owned by Blizzard? Do you honestly believe Blizzard would back such a claim ? Else they'd be eligible to getting sued for, example, that map posted by someone that's objectives was to "kill as many muslims" as possible.

Do you honestly believe that ?

As dickish of a move as it may be by Valve, they've got every right to register the name DOTA[2]... like what they've already done with Team Fortress, and Counter Strike. Though for this to not end up nasty on both parties, Valve SHOULD be amicable with the name's usage.



Shows what you know... DOTA is from a genre called MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which originated from Aeon of Strife in SC1 from what I know... or an action based RTS, or aRTS [which sounds silly...].

Ergo, DOTA =/= a genre.

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I know it feels like BS, most copyright laws do, but that is how the system works. If your game is a modification of someone elses code, they own whatever you make from it too. It is a trade off for actually being able to use their engine to make your game. Pretty much every piece of software written now has a licence agreement with it which dictates what you can do with it. If you pay for a commercial licence by all means you keep all your IP rights, but that is for the engine creators to decide, not for you to assume.

So yes, the kill muslims game would become Blizzards, so if they devs tried to sell it Blizzard could put their foot down. If not you could profit from Blizzards work, which is a big no-no in the corporate world. It's also why Blizz would likely delete that type of content if reported. I'm sure they would play the *well we can't be held responsible for what people upload* card, and no doubt there is a few 100 page eula saying don't make that kind of stuff anyway.

As for TF and CS, TF was made on the Quake Engine, which was probably licensed to them by ID software under a commercial licence. CS was made again on a heavily moded Quake Engine, which again was licensed for profit making.

The difference is the war3 isn't for profit. You can't just buy it and make whatever you want out of it to profit from it. You pay with your rights.

As for MOBA and aRTS, frankly they look like attempts to rebrand the genre so either they didn't have to call it DotA games (to avoid being sued) or so they could copyright that term itself. It's the same principle that means google hates people using google as a verb meaning to search for something. As soon as it comes another word for search, they loose that trademark on the name and bing, yahoo etc can start using it freely. No one should own the name DOTA so it can be used on the war3 engine, sc2 engine, or any other rts engine, and if LoL and HoN want to use it they should be able to too. It is an easily recognisable term for that type of game, any game should instantly know what you are talking about from it.

Moba on the other hand sounds like some sort of mobile game or something. aRTS could be any fighting game with strategy qualities. Plus I'm not sure I'd say DotA was even an RTS anyway, I mean you don't make buildings and control only 1 unit which are basically the definitions of an RTS. If anything this only goes to show how much it owns to it's RTS roots when the gameplay really has no RTS involved in it yet it tries to keep the name.

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Originally Posted by Daedius

I keep seeing people mentioning the 'fact' that DOTA was produced on WC3's editor, therefore making it Blizzard's, which is total bull. The use of everything within the editor belongs to Blizzard, i.e. - the usage of Textures, Models, etc... premade things that someone else has made within Blizz. Blizzard DOES NOT own the CONCEPT of the map the author of said map has done. IceFrog, and therefore Valve, have carried on building this concept with DOTA2.

Otherwise, and I love how everyone ignored this that I mentioned in my first post, questionable maps with discriminable content is also owned by Blizzard? Do you honestly believe Blizzard would back such a claim ? Else they'd be eligible to getting sued for, example, that map posted by someone that's objectives was to "kill as many muslims" as possible.

Do you honestly believe that ?

As dickish of a move as it may be by Valve, they've got every right to register the name DOTA[2]... like what they've already done with Team Fortress, and Counter Strike. Though for this to not end up nasty on both parties, Valve SHOULD be amicable with the name's usage.



Shows what you know... DOTA is from a genre called MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which originated from Aeon of Strife in SC1 from what I know... or an action based RTS, or aRTS [which sounds silly...].

Ergo, DOTA =/= a genre.

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/Sigh, you completely missed what I was saying....

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Originally Posted by DonTonberry

I agree with this, Blizzard has not tried to trademark the name, merely they are trying to stop Valve trademarking it. Their argument is valid, DoTA is symbolic of WarCraft III and Blizzard, if Valve got the trademark they would in turn stop Blizzard having any use of the name.

Why should Valve be able to trademark it and have it for their own when Blizzard who have a much stronger claim in law haven't done so and allowed the DoTA name to be used as it was intended, for the community.

[DTB] Valve = Greedy Cocksuckers! [/DTB]

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Hail, son. I am 100% behind this and Blizzards statements, there is absolutely no need to claim the trademark on DOTA except for adding another moneycow to their collection. gtfo valve :thumbdown:

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Originally Posted by Daedius

Shows what you know... DOTA is from a genre called MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which originated from Aeon of Strife in SC1 from what I know... or an action based RTS, or aRTS [which sounds silly...].

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Actually it really shows what you know... MOBA was a Riot marketing tool (which they later abandoned) used to break from the umbrella term of DoTA, for the genre, which then somehow evolved into the term aRTS.

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Originally Posted by Robert

No one should own the name DOTA so it can be used on the war3 engine, sc2 engine, or any other rts engine, and if LoL and HoN want to use it they should be able to too. It is an easily recognisable term for that type of game, any game should instantly know what you are talking about from it.

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^This is truth.

DOTA has always been crappy, I don't get why people play it, it's boring.
Hopefully blizzard wins.

Valve games suck tbh.