Copyright/Trademark Questions

[D_Roderick Beresford Stiffington IV]

I'm interested in creating a trading card game based on something that exists already. Lets say for example the existing game is Dota, Defense of the Ancients, which was a custom game created within Warcraft 3...the website is DotA-Allstars.com - Welcome. At the bottom of their website it says the website is Copyrighted. How would I go about finding out if I can go ahead and create a card game based on something like this?

I found these two websites to look up Copyrights and Trademarks...in my case which is more important to me, or is it both?

For Trademarks...
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?...ate=p01oug.1.1

For Copyrights...
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebr...cal&PAGE=First

When I look up "dota-allstars" on the Copyright site I find nothing, when I search on the trademark site it says the following.

Word Mark DOTA-ALLSTARS
Goods and Services (ABANDONED) IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: Baseball caps; Headgear, namely, caps, hats; Jackets; T-shirts
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 78919286
Filing Date June 28, 2006
Current Filing Basis 1B
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition January 30, 2007
Owner (APPLICANT) CML Technologies, LLC CORPORATION LOUISIANA 6287 West Main St Houma LOUISIANA 70360
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator DEAD
Abandonment Date October 25, 2007

What kind of research would I have to go to give myself the green light to go ahead and create a game and possibly sell it at a future date?

 

[Smartalk]

Worth picking up the phone and speaking with the people from both sites you listed. They will tell you if the other company is really listed, and what restrictions govern other people producing a similar site. Better that than spending time and effort in producing your site and then finding yourself involved in a law suit. and loosing everything.

These places are usually very helpful, after all that is what they are there for

Good luck hope your successful