Blizzard is SUING Valve over DOTA

In Valve's response:

"Opposer cannot claim exclusive rights to the DOTA mark."

Sounds like Valve is agreeing that DotA started with Warcraft II and III, but that does not signify that just because the idea was created using their world editor that the idea of DotA belongs to Blizzard - only the map and assets. The idea is responsible to its creator.

This will be a good case to see how far copyrights/trademarks extend from world creators to the worlds they create.

I'm definitely on Blizzard's side here. But it's maddeningly stupid that they haven't filed a trademark on it thus far.

I believe the stance Blizzard had was they were not going to file a trademark because the game belongs to the community, and they felt the community could govern themselves over it without Blizzard needing to step in and be big brother, or whatever idealistic logic they had. Now they feel Valve is threatening that position by attempting to possibly monetize the name and in the process screw over Blizzard for having anything to do with DotA.