Blizzard Seeks "HeroesofWarcraft" Domain

[Andy Chalk]

Blizzard Seeks "HeroesofWarcraft" Domain

Blizzard wants the National Arbitration Forum to grant it ownership of the HeroesofWarcraft.com domain.

If you've never before heard of Heroes of Warcraft, it's likely because there's no such game as Heroes of Warcraft. There is a HeroesofWarcraft.com domain, but according to a WHOIS [http://whois.domaintools.com/heroesofwarcraft.com] it's held by some guy named Simon Rattray of the U.K. Now Blizzard wants it, and it's gone to the National Arbitration Forum to get it.

To win the case it must demonstrate that the domain name "is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark" it holds, that the current holder has no legitimate interest in the domain and that it "has been registered and is being used in bad faith." It's not known whether Blizzard tried and failed to reach a deal with Rattray or just went straight to the arbitration process, but on those three points it would seem to have pretty good odds of winning the dispute.

Blizzard isn't saying anything about what it has in mind for the domain, but this isn't its first complaint over a Warcraft-related domain held by someone else: It disputed and won control over the worldofwarcraft.es domain in 2007. Activision and Microsoft have also availed themselves of the National Arbitration Forum's services, Activision in sought control [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112880-Activision-Wins-ModernWarfare3-com-Dispute] of Halo4Beta.net.

Source: Fusible [http://fusible.com/category/disputes/]


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[Akisa]

How much do you want to bet that the legal department was just bored out of its skull when they said to themselves to go after this guy. Because, come on.

Nah I think it's end of the year funds that they have to use or loose. So they justified by saying hey look at this case we're on and spending money on, don't take our money away.

 

[Shaidz]

How many people tried to go to HeroesofWarcraft.com after reading this and got disappointed but an "Access denied" message

On another note - I am a Blizzard fan but i really hate it when big companies throw their weight around. If they wanted that domain they should of gotten it first, otherwise tough cookies!

 

[Rad Party God]

Well, a Warcraft Dota seems unlikely as they're already developing their Blizzard All-Stars or something like that, my bet would be a simple domain owning, out of boredom.

 

[Shaidz]

Well, a Warcraft Dota seems unlikely as they're already developing their Blizzard All-Stars or something like that, my bet would be a simple domain owning, out of boredom.

Sounds about right. STEAL ALL THE DOMAINS!

 

[Charli]

...Couldn't they just buy the domain name? Christ Blizzard, bored much?

 

[gigastar]

The specter of Blizzard vs Valve over the Dota brand comes to mind.

Im not up to date on what became of that, so maybe Heroes of Warcraft is thier fallback.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Sorry, but strong case?
Maybe, maybe not.

"worldofwarcraft.es" is litteraly worlds apart from Heroes of Warcraft (pun intended).
The former is the exact name of their game and is VERY confusing.
Heroes of Warcraft sounds like it could be a cool fansite of multiple franchises

 

[NLS]

...Couldn't they just buy the domain name? Christ Blizzard, bored much?

You can't buy a domain if it's already taken, or whoever owns it is not interested in cooperating unless they fulfill "I want X millions CA$$$H for it". And considering the website doesn't contain anything at all, it's highly likely a case of domain-squatting where the owner was just waiting for an opportunity to grab some of Blizzard's money.

 

[MorganL4]

Well, a Warcraft Dota seems unlikely as they're already developing their Blizzard All-Stars or something like that, my bet would be a simple domain owning, out of boredom.

Am I the only one that sees the irony in this post?



OT I could understand if this guy had made this his webiste for his WoW guild or something, in fact that would probably be the best way for him to demonstrate a legitimate claim to it. But in this case it is a domain that uses "Warcraft" in the title and is thus using a trademark that is recognized to be owned by Activision Blizzard.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

I hope they lose, they're just being ^%$&%s. Companies got to stop suing everyone over every little thing.

 

[Nihlus2]

Could still be a renaming of their Dota clone, since the Blizzard Valve dispute merely resulted in Blizzard changing their name from "Blizzard DOTA" to "Blizzard All-stars", which is about as generic as Heroes of Warcraft... so anything goes I suppose?

 

[Little Gray]

...Couldn't they just buy the domain name? Christ Blizzard, bored much?

Did it ever occur to you that they tried that? Somebody else owns the domain and like the article states we do not know if Blizzard tried to buy it or not.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Could still be a renaming of their Dota clone, since the Blizzard Valve dispute merely resulted in Blizzard changing their name from "Blizzard DOTA" to "Blizzard All-stars", which is about as generic as Heroes of Warcraft... so anything goes I suppose?

I like Heroes of Warcraft better. Blizzard All-Stars sounds like they are trying to create sports game that is made up of teams of characters from all the Blizzard games.

 

[Arkham]

Looking at the wayback machine it seems the site just linked to several other sites. The earliest seems to be a French DOTA fansite, or an unrelated game using Warcraft III icons, that was at one time called "Heroes of Warcraft". It seems to have been pointing to a search engine for some time now.

 

[Vigormortis]

The specter of Blizzard vs Valve over the Dota brand comes to mind.

Im not up to date on what became of that, so maybe Heroes of Warcraft is thier fallback.

From what I've gathered, what came of the Valve v Blizzard debacle was that Valve (and specifically IceFrog and Eul) retained ownership of the Dota brand, including all characters, settings, etc.

Blizzard retained ownership of the All-Stars brand (hence Starcraft All-Stars) and reacquired ownership of content specific assets. Like creature races, some character designs, etc.

This is why most of what's in Dota 2 is similar to Dota, but with quite a few changes. For example, some characters having their species completely changed. (i.e. Storm Spirit going from Panda to Rat)

 

[Lyri]

It isn't even hosting a website, he probably jacked it for the very reason of it being sellable in the future.

This isn't the big company throwing it's weight around, this is the little man getting a fat pay check for having the hindsight to get it first.

 

[Xenominim]

And for those saying they should buy it, all that does is encourage more domain squatting in hopes of getting their own payouts. And it's not like they're trying to sue the person for cash, they're simply trying to get arbitration to give them an apparently unused website someone is squatting on perhaps because Blizzard do in fact have plans for it. I don't see a problem with this. Now if the guy had some elaborate fansite built up, then yeah that's a different story, but I doubt Blizzard would go after them for that since it would be that much more of a PR nightmare for them.

 

[antidonkey]

They should just pay the guy for it. I'm sure if they figured out what the total legal fees would be for fighting for the domain and just wrote the guy a check for that amount, I bet he'd hand over control. It would save a lot of hassle.