Quote:
Originally Posted by shovelquest
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Warhammer, Warcraft 3, dota, league of legends.
All clones of each other: no lawsuits.
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None of them copied each other's IP ... except for the original DotA, which was a custom Warcraft 3 map, so it used 100% Blizzard IP (but also made $0).
The law doesn't care about copying gameplay ideas, and in fact it's really hard to protect a gameplay idea under the law: you can't trademark or copyright it, you have to patent it, and for that you need a brand new mechanism worthy of a patent (something never seen in another game before, like the mouse trap in Mouse Trap).
Lawsuits are about copyright/trademark infringement, so they happen when people violate IP. They don't happen when one company takes the gameplay ideas of another. THJ did the former, but if they'd just made their own IP they could have gotten away with doing the latter.