Ok I have recently developed a website that has the following: The target audience is the MMORPG crowd. The name of the game is 'world of warcraft' I have designed a website that is called 'world of matecraft' is this in violation of copyright laws? the target audience is people who play world of warcraft. This is done over many means in the past but not considered copying: see the following: Microsoft Multimediasoft Macrosoft etc. The list of *soft products goes on and on Anyways, by altering the name of a product is this copyright infringement?
"World of Warcraft" is a trade mark of Blizzard, so I wouldn't go using that too loosely, but "World of Matecraft" has nothing to do with WoW due to the slight variation. That'll be fine.
That all depends if they have a history of sueing people for trademarks ect. In many cases they can just file a C.D because even typo's or variations can cause confution with the trademark. If I had a website called Macrosoft.com targetting windows OS they can easily sue and win. However if my website is Macrosoft and its dealing with Puppets they have no case really.
The above is good advice. The name would be trademark infringement in your particular case (phonetic and even foreign spellings can be infringement) and in this case you are altering it with a character from the game. Many of the game related companies tend to not be real aggressive in going after fan sites that promote their product in a postive way and which are not trying to imply they are an offical site (they don't approve it, but look the other way). I'm not saying you can use it, because they could clearly stop you if they wanted - but you could do some research to see if this particular trademark owner has a history of being aggressive. If it was any other sector besides gaming, I would say forget it because you are just tempting fate.
If you're making a fan site about WoW, I seriously doubt that Blizzard will be too bothered. There are millions of puns on "World of Warcraft" out there ^^;;
Let's just say there legal counsel VP contacted me and requested me to change the name but they do let tons and tons of other sites to do exactly what I am doing, I guess maybe they thing my site is bad publicity: thottbot.com wowwiki.com facesofwow.com just to name a few. Anyway, I will abide by whatever they say because I don't feel like going through a legal hassle
Well, that's too bad, but you have to be real careful about using tradenames and variations of them. At least they aren't suing you for infringement and damages. With Federal trademarks, they can also seek treble legal fees so it's not something you want to fool around with.