Blizzard files objection to Valve's DOTA trademark
Valve's attempt to trademark DOTA has come up against predictable opposition from Blizzard.
When Valve announced it would be working on a sequel to DOTA, originally a mod for Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft III, Blizzard's ears pricked up but it did nothing. After all, while DOTA required Warcraft III to play it wasn't a direct Blizzard property, but the work of third-party independent developers and fans of the game.
When Valve submitted a trademark application for DOTA in 2010, however, Blizzard's lawyers started to get antsy. Despite Valve having no prior input in the series, it appears it wanted to protect its efforts in the sequel with some legal might.
While it's true that Valve hired one of the creators of the original DOTA to work on the sequel, that's about the extent of its claim to the mark. Initial indications were that Valve would only seek to trademark 'DOTA 2,' but it soon became clear that the company was looking for full trademark rights to 'DOTA' as well.
That, Blizzard claims, is something up with which it shall not put. According to papers filed with the US Patents and Trademarks Office, Blizzard is looking to invalidate Valve's application.
The papers, quietly filed back in November 2011 before being dug up by a member of the Neogaf forums, claim that while Blizzard didn't file for a trademark on DOTA it has a better claim to the rights than Valve.
'By attempting to register the mark DOTA, Valve seeks to appropriate the more than seven years of goodwill that Blizzard has developed in the mark DOTA and in its Warcraft III computer game,' the company alleges in its filing for opposition, 'and take for itself a name that has come to signify the product of years of time and energy expended by Blizzard and by fans of Warcraft III.
'Valve has no right to the registration it seeks. If such registration is issued, it not only will damage Blizzard, but also the legions of Blizzard fans that have worked for years with Blizzard and its products, including by causing consumers to falsely believe that Valve's products are affiliated, sponsored or endorsed by Blizzard and are related or connected to Warcraft III.'
Blizzard's central argument may be sound, but it's making some questionable claims. 'By this Opposition, Blizzard seeks to prevent registration by its competitor Valve Corporation of a trademark, DOTA, that for more than seven years has been used exclusively by Blizzard and its fan community, under license from Blizzard,' the filing reads. That's not a claim that will likely stand up in court: DOTA was an independent effort, extending Blizzard's Warcraft III title but not associated directly with the company in any way.
With that simple statement, Blizzard appears to be claiming that it came up with the word 'DOTA' and licensed it to the community for use in the mod, something which appears to be contrary to the fact. That's a loophole that Valve could exploit as it seeks to fight Blizzard's claim and earn itself DOTA as a true trademark ready for its own licensing endeavours.
Thus far, neither Blizzard nor Valve have publicly commented on the case.
Do you think Blizzard's objection is fair, or is Valve only seeking to protect its future projects? Should both just sack the lawyers and get on with the business of making great games? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyMust've been a quiet day in Blizzards legal department, or they needed a new watercooler and filing the protest meant they could charge Blizzard a few grand.
However at any stage Blizzard could have pulled the plug but they didn't and continued to let independent people use their map to create a game.
It's quite clear that while Blizzard didn't exactly help much they didn't get in the way either, what's even clearer is that Valve has absolutely nothing to do with it and have jumped on it as a way of making money.
I predict Valve will just change the name from DOTA 2 to something else.
blizzard had no say in its creation and there is 100s of clones that are titled something else but its still the same game.
Valve have little or no claim in this matter either.
I think they should make a world of warcraft fps on consoles and call it a day. Turkey is done.
World of Modernfailcraft methinks :p
If they'd simply said "the name shouldn't be copyrighted by anyone" they'd have a much more convincing case. Sadly it seems their arrogance has got the better of them.
This probably won't go anywhere but it'd be a shame if Valve ended up backing down and changing the name.
That's already the case for many games that officially support modding and has been for years.
For instance, part of the EULA of the Skyrim Creatin Kit is that you give Bethesda permission to use your mods for anything they want, ever, including turning them into paid DLC or using them in promo material; in exchange for getting to use the CK to begin with; with no expectation of royalties, payment, credit, copyright or acknowledgement.
Modding is a murky area, IP-wise and always has been; since a huge number of mods rely on re-distributing modified content that was created/owned by the developer/publisher of the game.
On the case itself, I dont' really see Blizzard's claim.
That, is an absolutely AWESOME sentence!
LoL is free to play and has far less of a learning curve, IMO DOTA 2 will only grab the player base of DOTA and possibly HoN.
It is a case likely to be whoever gets the name first will own it and between blizzard and valve; looks like valve are the only ones applying for it as there were literally hundreds of random maps created for people to use and DOTA wasnt the only one; it was just one of the more popular ones thats all.
I concur. If they can bitch, moan and file lawsuits all day, they should atleast be able to play the game. Maybe actually have a valve vs actiblizzard tourney just as s PR stunt (i want to see blizzards arse handed to them).
Yes both companies should sack their lawyers & just get on with making awesome games. ;)
And if not, just change the flipping name. :D Would people honestly care if they tweaked the name if the game was everything & more than they anticipated?.
If anything I'd like to see the courts officially deny both of their claims so that any indie developers can call their title a DOTA game without fear of punishment.
To drain Valve of funding, you would need many, many years of courtroom battles.
Looks like Blizzard are really going to put the Zerg amongst the Terrans with this.
Arguably a new low for Valve. They should have better things to do than these cheap shenanigans.
Yeah like episode 3 or even a half life 3.
More specifically, it was Winston Churchill's way of demonstrating that the "rule" of grammar that states that you should not end a sentence with a preposition is complete nonsense. You would normally say "This is not something I will put up with". All those grammar 'rules' were made up by the Victorians who arbitrarily decided that English should copy Latin grammar. Complete nonsense, of course. Language is in constant flux, there is no rulebook.
-being Valve, it will not be a dodgy follow up.
-all other modders have had the chance to be employed by Valve.
-totally fair on Blizzard because they've not done a thing with regard to DOTA trademark.
i hope Valve wins, Blizzard has no right to this trademark, it's like saying Epic has rights to UnWheel (a racing mod for UT2004) when it was entirely a community effort. end of the day, mod's trademark belongs to the modder, not the game publisher.
as for the genre, i think tug-of-war is more applicable than DOTA, Defense of the Ancients is a specific to the theme of this W3 mod.
+1 tbh, it was a Mod for WC3, so the name should belong to the modders who originally created it (not valve and not Blizzard).
If this is indeed the case, and they have given consent to their new employers to trademark the name, then what is the problem?
It must surly give Valve a less tentative link to the name than Blizzard!
The way I see it, Valve lawyers might get away with it if they're saying hey, we're naming our game Dota 2; any similarities, likeness, associations, and down right plagerism to past games and experiences are purely coincidental. I think they can get away with it.
They might run into a few problems when they say, hey oh btw we want full rights to the actual DotA -- that's when things might get hairy. I think they should have been happy with that and went "GG, win by technicality!" But nooooo, they had to dive the tower and try to get full rights to everything. Noob business people...
But who are we to questions corporate business overlords right?