Rob Pardo is ‘confused’ by the sudden filing, especially as it’s been ”freely available” to Blizzard and the Warcraft III community since its creation.
”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,” said Blizzard’s Pardo.
He notes his reaction to the news as ”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, to be honest.”
Abdul Ismail, also known as IceFrog, is leading Valve’s development of DOTA 2. ”He’s one of the guys that most recently had been working on the DOTA Allstars map,” added Pardo. ”So I’m assuming, since he wants to continue making that map, that they felt like they should be able to trademark it.”
What if Valve object to Blizzard using the DOTA term? ”Our response is that they don’t own the term DOTA at this point. It’s something that they’re filing for,” Pardo said. ”Our contention is that it should continue to be available to Blizzard and to our community.”
Have you played super-popular Warcraft III mod Dawn of the Ancients? Valve’s DOTA 2 releases on PC and Mac in 2011 sometime.