The latest chapter in a sticky legal battle just reared its head again today. Blizzard has contested Valve's right to the name "Dota" for their upcoming Dota 2.

For those just joining us, let me give you a quick history lesson:

Dota (Defense of The Ancients) was originally a mod for Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft 3. Its clever mixing of role-playing, real-time strategy, and multiplayer deathmatch elements resulted in Dota becoming a huge success in the gaming community.

Eventually the 3 fine gentlemen working on Dota split off into different ventures. One of them is now working at Riot games making League of Legends: the most popular online PC game as of this writing, which borrows its basic framework from Dota.

The remaining two developers were hired by Half-Life creators Valve Software to start work on Dota 2, the official sequel to the mod. Dota 2 is now in an extensive beta phase and, given that it is already being played competitively, seems to be close to release.

Blizzard is making their own game in this genre called "Blizzard Dota," without the blessing of anybody who worked on the original game.

During the development of Dota 2, Valve tried to trademark the name "Dota." Not "Defense of The Ancients," just "Dota." Blizzard thinks this is a bad move because the game belongs to the community, so they have filed an official opposition to the copyright filing.

I'll spare you the full legal text (available here) and tell you the gist of it: Blizzard believes that the name "Dota" belongs to the community who made the game. Given that the entire thing was made possible through an editor and assets by Blizzard, they are also worried that the name "Dota" is more closely associated with them than with Valve software.

It is important to note that Blizzard isn't necessarily claiming ownership of the "Dota" name. They just think gamers will be confused/disappointed to see an official sequel come out without Blizzard involved.

This whole Dota thing has been a legal mess since day one. What is more important: owning the assets that made the mod, or hiring the talent behind it to make an official sequel? Can you own a mod to your game by association if you never formally worked with or supported the team that made it?

Sticky indeed.