Blizzard’s Heroes Of The Storm Name Already Trademarked In EU

The other day we reported that Blizzard had decided to give their upcoming MOBA, Blizzard All-Stars, a name change to Heroes of the Storm. We’re not sure if that was necessarily a catchier title, as far as legal contention goes, it looks like Blizzard All-Stars would have been a safer choice. It seems that over in Finland and in the EU trademark office, there already exists a game called, Myrskyn Sankarit, which when translated to English pretty much stands for “Heroes of the Storm” as well. Given that the game was published in July 2013, with the Indiegogo campaign having been launched in 2012, safe to say that its creator definitely beat Blizzard to the punch.

According to the game’s creator, Mike Pohjola, he expressed his concern about both games existing peacefully. Pohjola’s creation is a pen-and-paper game and while both games are definitely of different genres, the similarity in title could confuse gamers who might think that Pohjola’s creation is a spin-off of Blizzard’s game and vice versa. We’re not sure what Blizzard plans to do about this and it would be hard for them to contest that they were there first, especially since the title of the game was only recently changed, although Blizzard could also argue that Pohjola’s trademark registration was made after the leak of the Heroes of the Storm filing. Either way we guess we will just have to wait and see how this one plays out.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Blizzard, heroes of the storm, Legal