Valve and Blizzard Come to Agreement Over DotA Trademark
Valve and Blizzard have decided to let cooler heads prevail and have come to an amicable agreement...
Blizzard and Valve had come to blows over the DotA name. DotA, short for Defense of the Ancients, is a mod for Warcraft III that spawned the MOBA genre. Valve’s been developing the sequel to Defense of the Ancients, aptly titled DotA 2. Blizzard’s been developing a DotA sequel of its own and decided to take Valve to court, stating that since DotA was a mod for a Blizzard game and has been used in association with the Blizzard name, Valve had no right to register or use the DotA name.
The two companies have finally come to an agreement over the trademark dispute. Valve’s to retain the DotA commercial trademark and will be allowed to go through with titling DotA 2 as such. Blizzard will retain non-commercial use of the trademark, meaning that Blizzard will be allowed to continue promoting DotA material with its community. However, since it cannot use the trademark commercially, Blizzard has decided to rename its DotA sequel Blizzard All-Stars.
In regards to the settlement, Valve boss Gabe Newell remarked, “We’re pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one. We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities.”
There have been plenty of ugly lawsuits in the videogame world as of late. It’s nice to be able to see two videogame publishing giants come to an amicable agreement for once.

i don't have that luxury. My life span is short.
i don't have that luxury. My life span is short.
Sounds like a personal problem to me. I know I'm not going to sit around and whine about ONE game, when there are so many others that ARE out and worth playing right NOW.
False false false FALSE!
First, what is this 'MOBA' genre? DotA is AoS (Aion of Strife) genre, and the genre was NOT spawed by DotA, it was spawned by the SC1 AoS maps. It was later brought to the WC3 engine and released by multiple authors. Eul then merged multiple content from the various versions and solidified it into DotA. Guinsoo took it up where he left off, then Icefrog after Guinsoo. I'll reiterate once again, there is no such thing as 'MOBA' genre. It is the AoS genre.
The name DotA should now rightfully belong to Icefrog.
Well at least you got the abbreviation 'DotA' correct Toms, I'm seeing a lot of people calling it DOTA, which is incorrect. The first and last letters are capitalized, the middle two are not.
multiplayer online battle arena, google is your friend, there is a wiki entry for the term.
"Multiplayer online battle arena, a term used to describe the action real-time strategy genre."
Blizzard not only assumed ownership unrightfully but likely even broke laws in the process.
This was the issue at hand and why Blizzard tried to fight it so hard. Because their constant previous use and even collecting revenue from tournaments that hosted the game. (The tournaments would acquire a license from Blizzard) were all done without legal rights to. What I bet wasn't released publicly is part of the agreement that pardons Blizzard from doing just that before, which is what made Blizzard accept this deal because if they lost in court, Valve could have turned around and sued.
Lesson learned, never assume ownership unless you are the rightful and registered owner of such.
http://dota2talk.com/news/blizzard-and-valve-settle-dota-argument-blizzard-dota-is-now-blizzard-all-stars/
THG make your scouts work harder
Well the problem is Blizzard always refused to trademark the name DoTA. I can actually appreciate why as the fact that they felt they wanted people to feel free to use and promote mods based on their games. I actually lose a little respect for Valve for stepping in and trademarking, but legally Valve has their bases covered.
What Blizzard should have done is trademark the name way back when and then allowed the playerbase free use of it. This would have completely negated this today.
I'm guessing Blizzard just decided that it wasn't worth the many millions of dollars it would have taken to effectively "buy back" the name from Valve.
At any rate, it's nice to see these things getting settled without some arrogant piece of shit declaring "thermonuclear war" because his ego can't handle it =P
Blizzard didn't cared about Dota. They thought Icefrog would do it in Starcraft 2 for free.
Now that Valve hired him and picks up dota suddenly Blizzard cares. @_@
Then why did we heard about this only after Valve tried to trademark "dota" and not before when game was just work in progress?
Wouldn't be surprised if Icefrog is getting shafted by corporate greed (Valve). He's not even the lead man on Dota 2. If anything I'd say he was only hired to bring in with him his following and to use him for cases like the one vs Blizzard to claim "we have the mod creator therefore the name belongs to us." Sad thing is Icefrog is most likely just getting a lowly 5 figure salary and nothing more. Though I have no proof of that, that is likely the case seeing how corporations act very different behind the scenes.