Blizzard suing Valve over DOTA trademark

Blizzard has filed a lawsuit against Valve for their registration of the “DOTA” trademark, claiming that the DOTA name is closely associated with Blizzard’s IP–in particular WarCraft III, the game that the mod was developed for.

“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,” Blizzard claims, “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.”

When it was first revealed that Valve would be developing DOTA 2 under the direction of two out of the three developers that created the original WarCraft III mod, it came as a pretty big shock to the PC gaming community.

Amidst all of the surprise, there were some concerns raised over the fact that Valve intended to trademark the “DOTA” name. People argued that since the original Defense of the Ancients was a fan game, it was bad form for Valve to trademark what many players felt belonged to the community. But for Blizzard to essentially say that the DOTA “brand” is closely associated with their own IP, which is essentially the company trying to claim some form of indirect ownership, well, that’s where things get muddy.

If you’d like to go over the lawsuit yourself, you can do so at this link.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

via NeoGAF