Blizzard suffered a minor setback. A copyright lawsuit regarding the use of certain characters from World of Warcraft was dismissed by the court.
Not clearly formulated enough
In the legal dispute against the Chinese game developer Lillith Games, Blizzard faced a small defeat. The American court dismissed the lawsuit, which accused Lillith Games of using numerous characters in the game “DOTA Legends” that obviously belong to Blizzard’s intellectual property.
However, there are still concerns regarding Lillith. The dismissal of the lawsuit does not mean that Blizzard is factually in the wrong. Rather, the rejection is based on Blizzard’s insufficient specification of which characters were exactly copied.
A brief look at DOTA Legends suggests that in this case one could have simply written “all,” but that does not comply with current law. It is therefore to be expected that Blizzard will file another lawsuit and this time describe the relevant characters in much more detail so that the request can be addressed.
When Copiers Sue a Copier
What is particularly amusing (or somewhat bizarre) is the fact that the accused company Lillith is simultaneously involved in a legal dispute with uCool, who simply took the copy and copied it themselves. uCool released the game “Heroes Charge,” which is almost a 1:1 clone of “DOTA Legend” in terms of mechanics and characters.
It will likely take years to sort out this web of accusations and for everyone to get their due. What the verdict will be worth once the large portions of profit have already been distributed remains to be seen.
