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Blizzard Should Win Against Valve Over Dota 2
Warley
Member UncommonPosts: 508
First, I want to say that I'm a bigger fan of Valve than I am Blizzard. Mainly, my favorite place to buy games is Steam. Plus, I don't care for Activision.
Having said that, Blizzard should -and probaby will- win the trademark battle over Dota 2. Why? Well, Blizzard actually does have more claim to Dota, due to Defense of the Ancients (DoTA) being built with Blizzard's tools and Blizzard's technology. Since Valve is using Dota 'and' 2, they are actually capitalizing on a successful name that was built and ran on Blizzard's technology. Why should Valve be able to monetize on Blizzard's goodwill of allowing the community to continue to develop and own the DotA mark? It's a community mark, not Valve's.
Valve's pursuit of the Dota 2 trademark is purely meant to capitalize on the DotA name. In actuality, it'd be like Blizzard trying to trademark MMORPG or FPS. DoTA is not only an acronym for Defense of the Ancients, but also a well recognized symbol for DoTA style games. It's on par with MMORPG and FPS.
Blizzard, on this issue, is definitely on the moral, high ground. They are the good guys. They're preventing Valve from trademarking a name that is owned by the DoTA community; which Valve is trying to 'steal' from.
Comments
I don't think either company should have the rights to the name, but in the case I agree with you and Blizzard should indeed win.
Yeah it should be the right of the mod maker who originally made it and then Blizzard should have to give him some deal to take it like a job offer. I just cannot believe no one thought to get the rights for the name Dota, seems like an obvious move. Personally I'd like to see Valve make a Dota with all their characters, rather than the generic DOTA rip off without all the Blizzard characters and replaced with generi clones.
I don't care who gets it out of those two companies as I dislike both of them. Valve hasn't made a good game since 2007 and Blizzard hasn't made a good game since Warcraft 3.
I'd be perfectly content if Valve just dropped the name anyway and let Blizzard have their way. People aren't going to not play Valve's Dota because of it's name. The MOBA (or ARTS, not sure which acronym people are using now) community is going to play what they enjoy the most because they're really kind of strapped between only a small handful of games anyway.
I assume Valve only kept the name Dota because of their acquisition of the most popular developer for the mod and now the original developer of the mod. I think it's rightfully up to those guys as to what happens with it, but legally I'm sure it's whoever has the most lawyer power and I'd be willing to wager it's Blizzard.
Blizzard didn't make the game. That's the key. It is not their intellectual property. It was a mod made by fans and as such the trademark belongs to the people who actually made the game - the modders, IceFrog et al.
Similar games are known as MOBAs which stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (iirc).
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I am a Valve fan and I agree as well.
They should have used a different name for their game.
So you agree Valve shouldn't get their hands on it, then?
Well it'd be clear-cut if Icefrog created DOTA, but he didn't.
So it's a little like if I took over Counter-strike's mod development at some point and then arbitrarily decided I owned that IP and deserved to be awarded a trademark.
But I largely agree with you that it similarly makes little sense for the IP to be owned by the company that created the base game. Like if Valve tried to lay trademark claim to Counter-strike (before buying it, obviously.) Although having not read modded games' EULAs very carefully maybe there's jerk clauses that let those companies do that. Sure hope not as that seems like outright IP theft to me.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Meh...
Oh wait no! Intel own 40%, corsair 30% and NVIDIA 30% because that's the hardware they built it with
Icefrog sold it to Valve, and he had every right too.
Valve should of just changed the name, because Blizzard really has no rights to the game. Just because the game was made with Blizzard tools means nothing, if I build a car with craftman tools, doesnt mean craftman owns the car.
I didn't know Icefrog wasn't onboard from the beginning, but the trademark should belong to those who originally created it, definitely not Blizzard.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Icefrog owns the game..Blizzard can fuck off, their tools? they have a map editor and everything for free, they let players create their own content. Blizzard is nothing more than greedy shitholes.
No Blizzard should not win this. Not a fan of Valve, for my own reasons, but this is like saying that if I use ArchiCAD to make a house, the company that made the program I used to make the project for said house should have a claim on my work.
No, it's like saying that you used ArchiCAD, and Blizzard's land, bricks, and wood to build 'your' house.
Just because you designed it, dosen't give you any legal or ethical right over it, no matter how much work has been invested on your part... you live there by Blizzard's allowance. It dosen't matter if you have painted the bricks and wood a different colour, or if you have ut them into different shapes. They are simply not yours.
If you don't want a big assed company to make a claim on 'your' house, go buy your own land, brick, and wood and don't use theirs.
No they shuldn´t blizzard never cared about the dota community in the wc3 life span and never supported it. now after years when eul and icefrog finally start to bring a stand alone version they interested in it, Sorry blizzard this time u wont have a piece of the big cake. And eul is the creator of dota so blizz can go and cry in the corner.
Well actually, the way I see it, I bought the game, that includes the editor, and made something using it, just like I use another program to do something else. They gave me the tools I payed for and after that want to take something that I created using those tools.
They licensed you the tools for private use... in no way does that license extend to owning the rights to any of the code.
The tools and materials still belong to Blizzard, no matter what you use them to build.
Feel free to create your own tools and materials in order to have ownership over what you have made.
Greedy Valve? WHAT?
You do realize the issue is that Blizzard only copy-righted Defense of the Ancients and not Dota, which is why Blizzard was absolutely butt-hurt about this situation. Essentially the game would be called Dota, and no longer an acronym for Defense of the Ancients.
Surely you could recognize the differnece between DotA and Dota.
First of all thanks for labeling me without even knowing me, but oh well, on the internet the moment you don't agree with someone, you're a hater, makes total sence. I actually enjoied Blizzard games quite a lot.
Secondly, Blizzard wants the Dota TM for the same reason, to use the name for their own game, it's about the money too.
Thirdly I don't know if you are just assuming that VALVE would get a check whenever Dota, as in let's call it Dota 1, is used, but if it's fact and not just an assumption, I would agree that part isn't right, but I guess that would make sence so they push people into playing Dota 2.
Ok, I hope they both have to abbandon the TM. Am I a hater of both companies now?
The name is not the game. Who has rights to the name has rights to the name, simple as that. If no one claimed legal rights to it then it is up for grabs. It is as simple as that. If coca cola never trademarked their name then I could make a soda called coca cola and it would be totally legal for me to do so.
Blizzard could only claim rights to the original DOTA but not to the names and ideas behind it unless they actually own or created legal rights to it.
If Valve loses then they just have to change the name anyway. It is not a huge issue.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
So they don't want anyone to be able to TM it? Ok, understand it better now. Btw, you can get your point across without insulting people.
You know that long wall'o'text that you find at the login of nearly every online game? The EULA (End User license Agreement)? Well when you click accept (which you do, because it's the only way to start playing) everything that is created is considered property of the host company.
Here's Blizzards:
A. All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including without limitation any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions and recordings, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, and any related documentation) are owned or licensed by Blizzard.
This type of clause is pretty much standard for online games (mostly because they're written by corporate lawyers and not the game companies themselves).
In the end, I hope Blizzard wins this one and Dota remains untrademarked. Valve can name it something else. League of Legends did, and it's not like naming it something else hurt LoL.
Well the difference between Valve and Blizzard is that Valve hires good modders (IceFrog, the modder initially behind Alien Swarm, etc)
As for Icefrog, he didn't create the game, that's right. However when the original creator left DOTA, IceFrog took over, so while he may not be the creator, he was definitively the "top developer" on DOTA (I'd even argue that the original DOTA wouldn't have reached that popularity without IceFrog).
I really don't think Blizzard should win. Heck, they didn't even start sueing (or at least warn) Valve when they first announced DOTA 2, or had that tournament. Heck, it wasn't until Blizzard started pushing their own DOTA for StarCraft that they started sueing. It's just ridiculous.
I'm not a lawyer (not even from the US and english is not my primary langauge
), but I think you're missing something:
"15. Since at least 2004, members of the public have come to associate and
identify the marks "Defense of the Ancients," "DotA," "DOTA," and "Dota" (the
"DOTA Marks") with Blizzard and its interactive computer game products, including
Warcraft III. Blizzard's rights in and to the DotA Marks result from a number of factors,
including but not limited to the following:"
You can ckeck those "factors" at (16), (17), (18), (19) and (20) .
Also, at the end of (21):
"In 2010, DotA-Allstars,LLC was purchased by Riot Games, Inc. In 2011, Riot transferred DotA-Allstars, LLC to
Blizzard. Accordingly, Blizzard now possesses all rights that DotA-Allstars LLC may
have had in connection with the DotA Mods and the DotA-Allstars website, including
any trademarks or other goodwill DotA-Allstars LLC may have had in the DOTA Marks."
Source: http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91202572&pty=OPP&eno=1
I hope this clarifies things up a bit.
icefrog belong to valve now , so dota name belong to valve!Dota 2 have to win this