They don't present themselves as AoE2 either - saying that it's like AoE2 is not infringing - so no trademark issue either.
Can't see a problem with this.
Read up on some judges' verdicts on video game clones at: http://adlervermillion.com/copyright-illustrated-video-game-...
http://games.slashdot.org/story/03/06/21/1323249/freecraft-c...
(And yes, it's been 11+ years since I got excited about one.)
Good job blizzard on preventing any games from ever ending in "craft".
This kinda makes sense from the trademark POV, try starting sports car company called "Ferari".
So to get close to a car analogy [it's still poor] it should rather be "try giving away plans for a car called a 'Triangolorossa'".
The real chance of confusion is pretty close to zero but no doubt a motivated lawyer and a legal system corrupted to favour mega-corps would still be able to decide it was a genuine trademark confusion.
If it's a clone then there are copyright issues. If it's not a clone then having a similar but clearly distinct name is not a genuine point of confusion for the public.
Also from the comments on that page:
>I am not a lawyer, but on the surface this case looks similar to one the Supreme Court just decided recently in which Victoria's Secret sued a sex-toy company called Victor's Secret for trademark infringement because of the soundalike name. Victoria lost---the Court held that you must present strong evidence of serious harm before you can sue for trademark infringement over a similar-sounding name.
I doubt there was any evidence of "serious harm", or that any of the players thought it was actually a Blizzard product. A big disclaimer saying "not associated with starcraft, bizzard, etc" should be more than enough to stop any confusion if it existed. But they didn't ask for that, they asked for them to take down the whole thing.