Shortly after Valve filed for the “DOTA” trademark, Steve “Guinsoo” Feak and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon, counter-filed for the same trademark. Pendragon and Guinsoo voiced their opinions in a recent PC Gamer article, saying that they believe “DotA should always remain a community-owned product that modders, independent developers and game fans can continue to modify and play as often as they’d like.”

Their aim is not to take control of the trademark but rather have it remain a community-controlled and managed trademark. While these two individuals no longer work within the current DotA community, their work on it in the past and current work put them in a better position for claiming the rights to the trademark (in my opinion). Continue past the break to find out more about the players involved.

Guinsoo was the creator of the Defense of the Ancients: All Stars custom game, updating Eul’s original Defense of the Ancients to be compatible with and take advantage of the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne expansion pack. Pendragon maintained a community website based off of the game that quickly became the official website for the mod. Both have since joined hands to help Riot Games develop and promote the free-to-play DotA-inspired game, League of Legends.

Valve recently hired IceFrog, the most recent designer of the game and it is rumored that they are working on a DotA (or DotA-inspired) title, although no official announcements have been made yet. So who will be granted the trademark? It’s anyone’s guess.

Riot Games’ dev counter-files “DotA” trademark [PC Gamer]

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