[PC] Blizzard and Valve head to court for legal dispute over DOTA 2

[PC] Blizzard and Valve head to court for legal dispute over DOTA 2

Looks like the gloves are off now, as Blizzard and Valve head to court to engage in a legal dispute over a trademark request related to DOTA 2. The upcoming release is a spiritual successor to an incredibly popular WarCraft III modification, Defense of the Ancients. The project's lead designer is IceFrog, who was a modder who worked on keeping the mod going from 2005 until he joined Valve's DOTA 2 team sometime before it was announced in late 2010.

Both sides have been quite vocal about the case here, but this is the first time we've heard of it heading to the courts. Blizzard argues "for more than seven years... been used exclusively by Blizzard and its fan community" and that Valve does not have the claim to the name that they do. They claim that whilst no company actually owns the trademark they hold more of a claim on it than Valve.

As for Valve's side to the argument, Gabe Newell commented on the issue at last years Gamescom in an interview with Eurogamer. "The issue with that was, when we were talking with IceFrog originally, he wanted to build the sequel to DOTA," Newell said. "So the reason to call it Dota 2 is it actually does a pretty good job of communicating to gamers what it is the game is going to be."

It will interesting to see where this case leads, and you can be sure we'll have ears pressed to the ground for any further rumbles.

Written by: Kyran Morrison

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