“To us, that means that you’re really taking it away from the Blizzard and Warcraft III community and that just doesn’t seem the right thing to do,” Blizzard’s Rob Pardo told Eurogamer.
“[We feel]a little bit of confusion, to be honest. Certainly, DOTA came out of the Blizzard community… It just seems a really strange move to us that Valve would go off and try to exclusively trademark the term considering it’s something that’s been freely available to us and everyone in the Warcraft III community up to this point.”
“Valve is usually so pro mod community. It’s such a community company that it just seems like a really strange move to us… I really don’t understand why [they would do it] , to be honest.”
Well, you do. It’s because Valve’s game, unlike the mod, is a retail product that will sell for money, so a trademark is needed. But we get your point. Just because it’s needed doesn’t make it kosher.
Valve is already facing a battle in its attempts to trademark the name, with one of DOTA’s creators filing a competing trademark in an attempt to retain some sense of ownership over the brand. Which, considering most people want a community-created project to remain something for a community and not for someone to own, is probably missing as much of the point as Valve’s own actions.
Valve shouldn’t trademark DOTA – Blizzard [Eurogamer]
ripperhugme
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 9:19 AMIts really still just team icefrog (or whatever they call themselves)that’s just been assimilated into Valve.
foxbane
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 10:00 AMthe thing is that with valve that even though they own the rights to something it still feels like its a community thanks to their awesome mod support
Joe Mama
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 12:47 PMLeft 2 Die.
Double standards ho.
Dash - Attorney
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 2:34 PMThat would only be the case if Blizzard trademarked the name and sold it off as either a mod or an entirely new game. LAWYER’D!
Cody Pollock
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 1:39 PMNot right.
Valve shouldn’t be allowed to do this.
Jacques Bodourian
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 4:03 PMThe name belongs to al the original creators of the DOTA game….if they all said to Valve sure you can take the name this would be ok.
Valve is wrong to bully the creators out of the name they created.
Icefrog is only the latest developer of DOTA, if he wants to develop another DOTA for mone he can go get everyone else who started it and aproach valve….not go solo and try to claim the loots.
Nicholas Corcoran
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 5:56 PMpeople are forgetting. BLIZZARD DIDN”T MAKE DOTA. so blizard can stfu. if they wanted to say DotA was theirs, they should have trademarked it first. Their fault for missing an opportunity.
Jacques Bodourian
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 9:40 AMNo one is saying Blizzard has the right of ownership, and neither are they. They are stating they think that what Valve is doing is a bit ‘iffy’ as DOTA has such a strong link with Warcraft 3.
The only thing people are saying is that Dota belongs to the developers of the mod….and more importantly, the name belongs to who ever came up with it first.
James
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 6:39 PMIt would be smart for Valve to license the trademark for use to describe the Warcraft 3 mod.
People are going to keep on referring to the mod by that name, so it would be better to make that a licensed use of the mark rather than something that will weaken the mark.
All things being equal though, I don’t think Blizzard should have any interest in the mark: that should lie with the mod’s developers. What is unclear is whether the relevant developers have transferred their interest to Valve.