Blizzard notched another victory in its legal campaign against World of Warcraft bots when a judge on Wednesday ruled that a leading bot violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. MDY Industries LLC, the firm that develops and sells the Glider bot, already suffered a major setback last summer when the judge granted Blizzard summary judgment on several key issues. This week’s decision deals with the issues the judge believed could not be decided until the conclusion of this month’s trial. The judge ruled that Glider violated the DMCA’s ban on “circumvention devices,” and he also found that MDY’s founder, Michael Donnelly, was personally liable for the actions of his firm.

As we’ve noted before, Blizzard’s legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard’s wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell’s decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms.

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