Copyright law in the MOBA genre: a comparative analysis of DOTA2 and League of Legends

Abstract

The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game genre has been plagued with copyright infringement cases. Some of the copyright challenges that face this genre stem from the fact that the progenitor to the genre, Defense of the Ancients (DotA), was a ‘mod’ created for an already-existing video game, Warcraft 3. Further, DotA was a community-based project and while there were predominantly three major ‘modders’, it is argued that many of the characters that appeared in DotA were, in themselves, copyrighted works that originated from contributors out of the playing-community, who made material contributions through forums, notice boards and the DotA Allstars website. This article delves into the copyright challenges facing the genre, with a specific focus on DotA, DOTA2 and League of Legends (LOL). An in-depth study is done on the copyright ownership of the mod, DotA, with a conclusion being drawn that the copyright ownership of characters found in DotA is of utmost importance, as most of the other elements found in MOBA games are not worth copying. As will be illustrated, copyright infringement challenges in the MOBA industry usually revolve around the copying of characters, many of whom draw inspiration from characters that appeared in the progenitor, DotA. With the focus of copyright ownership shifting to the characters found in DotA, the ownership attributed to the three modders in the Blizzard Entertainment, Inc and Valve Corporation v. Lilith Games (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. and uCool, Inc. suit will be critically evaluated. Finally, an approach is proposed for use in copyright infringement cases in the MOBA genre, specifically where the characters in contention are based on or derived from DotA characters, to try to address any potential copyright infringement claims where the alleged proprietor claiming infringement is not truly the copyright owner of the characters in question. As a practical illustration, the proposed approach will be applied to various DOTA2 and LOL characters, with a conclusion being drawn as to why there has been a lack of copyright infringement cases between Riot Games, the owner of LOL, and Valve Corporation, the owner of DOTA2, despite apparent similarities between various of their characters.