Blizzard sues Valve over DOTA

[Orpheus]

^ No ones bought the name rights to dota - that's why they're trying, they're fighting over the Name rights since valve wants to go ahead and make it there own when in all honesty

It's a community name more then anything thus valve shouldnt try to buy it.

It's understandable though. Slapping DOTA as your game's title is sure to get you some juicy cash, just for the history and popularity behind the term.

From how I see it:

I'm Blizzard, I wasn't directly involved in the development of DotA, but I did offer the platform in which it was created so I'm indirectly responsible for its creation. I won't trademark the brand since I didn't make it personally and since it's a community game. I could get loads of money if I did trademark it though, but wait, I'm already getting money since you need one of my games to play it. So I'm fine with that.

I'm Valve, I wasn't involved AT ALL (directly or indirectly) in the development of DotA, but hey, a few years ago I got one of the original creators on my team so that makes up for it. Now the name belongs to me. I'm going to exploit the name even though I could easily end up creating a new MOBA game that could compete directly with DotA simply because DotA means loads of easy cash in my pockets. Take a look at all that popularity, EXPLOIT EXPLOIT.

[xWalrus]

So blizzard wants to win against the real creator of dota?

Really sad...

What?

/10char

[Jin-Roh]

Where did you get that from?? Dota was always associated with Blizzard, and always will be.

The developer of DOTA is working for Valve... Derp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceFrog

Just so we are clear, IceFrog works on DOTA right now, has worked on it from 2005 till now, continues to work on it, owns the DOTA site and is working with Valve to release DOTA2... On the other hand, one of the two original devs works on LoL.

[JacerX]

The creator of DOTA is working for Valve... Derp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceFrog

Just so we are clear, IceFrog created DOTA, has worked on it from 2005 till now, continues to work on it, owns the DOTA site and is working with Valve to release DOTA2 because he is the creator...

In 2008, Feak and Mescon each assigned all of their rights in and to the DotA Mods and the DotA-Allstars Website to "DotA-Allstars, LLC." In 2010, DotA-Allstars, LLC was purchased by Riot Games, Inc. In 2011, Riot transferred DotA-Allstars, LLC to Blizzard.

So did you completely miss that or do you just not want to acknowledge it happened?

[Jin-Roh]

People are just ******ed... I guess I have to break it down even more.

Blizzard: Made the engine in which DotA was built on.

Feak: One of two original creators that was part of the project for less than 2 years... 03-05. Note the original DotA was horribly balanced and not the popular game everyone knows now.

Mescon: DotA fansite creator... He has nothing to do with any of this.

Riot Games: Makers of LoL which Feak is a part of.

Valve: Known to take small mods and make them into epic full games with the modders on their side. Offered to make DotA far superior than what it is now.

IceFrog: Official DotA developer after the original two left the scene. Has worked on the game and kept it alive for 7 years making it the game we now know. Took it from crap to super popular and also holds the official game site. Credited for creating DotA because he pretty much did... If IceFrog never got involved, the game would have never become popular let alone be alive now. Think about it for a second... The original devs straight up quit and left IceFrog with a pretty broken game. If not for him, we would not even know what the heck DotA was let alone who should be able to make a DotA 2. He joined Valve to make the DotA experience even better. True fans of DotA are hyped about this and totally approve.

[Felore]

I think Blizzard is doing the right thing, there protecting there property after all they provided the tools, else there be no DOTA.

EA just wants to profit from the name, nothing else.

[Ghz]

I think Blizzard is doing the right thing, there protecting there property after all they provided the tools, else there be no DOTA.

EA just wants to profit from the name, nothing else.

Why do I even bother arguing about Dota on ONRPG

[Xeonswitch]

So blizzard wants to win against the real creator of dota?

Really sad...

You understand that IceFrog is like the seventh person to work on DotA, right? He's also a massive idiot, and hopefully Valve is smart enough to give him as little responsibility as possible.
Not to mention that 90% of all the patches and everything that gets released are done by people that aren't him.

I'm sure IceFrog is being s****fed hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing very little.

I hope Blizzard wins this. They're 100% in the right.

[Jin-Roh]

I think Blizzard is doing the right thing, there protecting there property after all they provided the tools, else there be no DOTA.

EA just wants to profit from the name, nothing else.

...Are you kidding me? Well then I guess Microsoft owns everything made on PCs and Apple owns everything that is made on Macs by your standards... PS, that's ******ed as hell.

[Xeonswitch]

...Are you kidding me? Well then I guess Microsoft owns everything made on PCs and Apple owns everything that is made on Macs by your standards... PS, that's ******ed as hell.

Last time I checked DotA is a mod made on a platform, in which you accept terms of service and license agreements to use, so pretty much giving up all rights to it. There's a reason they never made a mass profit off WC3 DotA.

PC games are made by multi-million/billion dollar gaming conglomerates, who purchase rights to use certain things, or even the ability to release their product on certain platforms.

[Ghz]

I remember reading that Blizzard aren't trying to own the trademark, they are fighting because they believe the DoTA name belongs to the community and no company(even Blizz themselves) should have the right to trademark it.



Actually you are also incorrect, DoTA was based on Aeon of Strife which was originally a custom map for the original Starcraft.

Oh boy Blizzard is supposed to be the knight in white armor now?

Let me ask you something, in the 7 years which Icefrog continually raised Dota, when did Blizzard ever offered Icefrog any opportunities to make a full game when it was made popular in the last few years? What did Blizzard even do for the Dota community in general? Go over to sites like playdota or joindota, and see if the people there are actually supporting Blizzard.

After Dota 2 was made Valve shown their commitment to make the game as popular as Starcraft 2 in the field of eSports by doing an International every year with a huge prize pool, that's more than anything Blizzard has ever done for Dota, and now they're saying that they're doing this "for the community?"...

I'm not here to argue about the technicalities of a single word or sentence of whether Blizzard is able to do this or not, but anyone with common sense should see just how ridiculous Blizzard is when they try to pull something like this.

[olaph]

If IceFrog really cares about the community just change the name, all DoTA fans know its the true successor to DoTA. Change the name and skip all this bullshit and because everyone KNOWS who made the game and whats its like why does the name need to be used.

It's not using the name that has caused this issue, it is the fact Valve is trying to trademark something that dozens of people have contributed to over the years.

Had they not tried to attempt to own the name, they could still call it DoTA2 and not have all the lawsuits challenging it.

Oh boy Blizzard is supposed to be the knight in white armor now?

You missed the part where I said "*edit* turns out it was Guinsoo & Pendragon who said that"

Let me ask you something, in the 7 years which Icefrog continually raised Dota, when did Blizzard ever offered Icefrog any opportunities to make a full game when it was made popular in the last few years? What did Blizzard even do for the Dota community in general? Go over to sites like playdota or joindota, and see if the people they are actually supporting Blizzard.

Icefrog isn't the only person who has contributed to DoTA and hence isn't the only person who has a say in it.

After Dota 2 was made Valve shown their commitment to make the game as popular as Starcraft 2 in the field of eSports by doing an International every year with a huge prize pool, that's more than anything Blizzard has ever done for Dota, and now they're saying that they're doing this "for the community?"...

And how much did Valve contribute to the original game to warrant trademarking it? Yeah that's right, nothing.

I'm not here to argue about the technicalities of a single word or sentence of whether Blizzard is able to do this or not, but anyone with common sense should see just how ridiculous Blizzard is when they try to pull something like this.

Valve is being just as ridiculous, unfortunately your bias isn't allowing you to think objectively. In fact most of what you have said is hardly relevant to who should own the DoTA trademark and honestly I believe it should be the modding community.

If the modding community keeps ownership of the trademark, everyone wins which is why I don't understand this massive pissing contest over irrelevant BS like who contributed more between the numerous DoTA developers.

[Reefer Madness]

That still begs the question why they can't change and trademark a new name knowing full well the community views and names this as DoTA's successor.

What exactly is the harm in that other than the obvious of not being able to using the DoTA name for marketing purposes.

[Ghz]

So you feel that Valve should own it simply because Icefrog was one of the developers working on DoTA?

You should go a few post back, I think I was very clear on what I was trying to deliver.

Really now? If anything the term Dota is more associated to Icefrog than anything else. If you had actually played Dota back in 05 you would know how horribly balanced everything is in the game, the heroes and items were so badly designed you would hardly even see any evidence of that today. He went against the community and made huge changes to the game, for the better. If not for him Dota would not even be competitively viable and companies like Valve would actually pour money funding the International and earned Dota its fan-base today. The fact that Blizzard is trying to take the term Dota away from him is ludicrous, and if you have been playing Dota for years you couldn't possibly argue otherwise.

I'm not here to argue about the technicalities of a single word or sentence of whether Blizzard is able to do this or not, but anyone with common sense should see just how ridiculous Blizzard is when they try to pull something like this.

[Xeonswitch]

IceFrog not only worked on it, he still works on it, owns the site, distributes the mod and updates for it and is the only person still working on it as a dev that I know of. If he wants to go to Valve for a superior product, why stop him?

Because DotA is not HIS.

[SonicCebalo]

Well this is going nowhere, and I still have to study for midterms. But I will summarize what I think should be clarified:

If you're wondering what the true community thinks, then head over to playdota or joindota to see what people have to say about this.

And what I have been saying so far is I guess common sense on what I think is right, thanks.

And what is this true community? There is no such thing as a true community, I've played DotA for YEARS, does this include me as part of the DotA community? I even support Blizzard and Riot on this.

Not only that, but it's already well known that Icefrog isn't the shining paragon people think he is due to his anonymity, he is already known to exploit companies with the namesake of DotA.

Examples are this are with Icefrog lying to Pendragon about working for S2 (which led to Pendragon taking down the original dota-allstars website) after being rejected from Riot games with his ludicrous application (go google it), and leaving the S2 team to work with Valve for the higher paycheck (which is why S2 is no longer allowed to port DotA heroes).

Lets just remember that Blizzard and Valve are opposing the DotA name being trademarked for a company, not taking it for use themselves. Using the official name of DotA 2 as some sort of sequel to something Icefrog simply does not own is stupid, not to mention the majority of balancing work he is praised for was not actually done by him, but by the internal community playtesters.

Again, DotA is a community effort and does not deserve the right to be officially trademarked by any one person.

[olaph]

Well this is going nowhere, and I still have to study for midterms. But I will summarize what I think should be clarified:

If you're wondering what the true community thinks, then head over to playdota or joindota to see what people have to say about this.

The community is as divided as we are, the problem is everyone is quick to consider differing opinions as invalid.

And what I have been saying so far is I guess common sense on what I think is right, thanks.

If you actually had any you would know that an opinion =/= common sense.

[Attila]

Imagine if Leonard Kleinrock decided to put a trademark on internet, calling it his own and deciding whether we can and what to post on it.

Pure greed. Blizzard can go burn in hell.

[olaph]

Imagine if Leonard Kleinrock decided to put a trademark on internet, calling it his own and deciding whether we can and what to post on it.

Pure greed. Blizzard can go burn in hell.

Valve are trying to trademark the DoTA name and Blizzard are attempting to fight it.
If you bothered to read the damn thread, you would have known this.

[gratscorpio]

Of course it should be trademarked it has gone from self created community mod to highly profitable big bucks investment by big corporations. The name now needs to be protected to keep their investments safer as to allow it not to be trademarked will allow for an over use of the DOTA name and the name will lose it's value. Irregardless of its origins the name is now a corporate investment and it will be treated as such, and no Blizzard is not being greedy they are protecting their investments into the DOTA name and if I am not mistaken they have the rights to the name any ways. Any good business would sue to keep its competitors from gaining an advantage to call them greedy is plain ignorance because you would all do the same thing. If you had helped create (provided the foundation) for a profitable well know product that you now had the rights to...would you want someone else using it to gain market share and profit? No you wouln't.


scorpio

[GameIT]

If their suit is successful it will set a standard that allows companies to take/steal whatever they want from gamers.

Character and Guild Names, Designs, Ideas...

[whitey]

If their suit is successful it will set a standard that allows companies to take/steal whatever they want from gamers.

Character and Guild Names, Designs, Ideas...

Do people even read any more? Or do they just post and make themselves look stupid?

[Cy-Kill]

Light And Darkness or something like that right?

I miss that one.

I don't remember the name.

Old news is old: http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?p...&pty=OPP&eno=1
Yup all the media is necronewsing this shit.
And DotA/DOTA2 aren't ****ing moba.

DotA stand for Defense of the Acient while DOTA stand for nothing.. this alone mean that even if blizzard have the right ( and it doesn't ) to sue Valve they can't do nothing because DotA and DOTA are two different things.
Actualy Valve can sue Blizzard about " Blizzard DOTA " but they don't care.
And this fail attempt from Blizzard is from November with 0 progress, they are clearly using this for ads on Blizzard DOTA because they already know they can't win this.
Oh and Blizzard is so mad about the lost opportunity ( why they didn't hire IceFrog in all this years? ) that is making is own on SCII and on Diablo3 too ( yes is going to be one of the pvp mode )

So, I see you only posted to make your post count bigger, because if you'd bothered to read the first post in this thread, you would've seen that it was already linked to the USPTO document.

Also, DotA/DOTA, and any variation therein stand for the same thing, and yes, it is a MOBA.

[ZeroSaberblade]

They should just Rename the title.

[ASNZern]

They should just Rename the title.

Yes, if Valve would only do that. But no, Valve is acting like a troll and refuses to do so. Even though there already are LoL, HoN, Demigod, and what not all over the place, but Valve is just being arrogant and ignorant.