Whether Blizz was going to make a DS port or not, a copyright holder is obligated to protect its copyright consistently or they risk losing enforcement rights. Blizz had to either grant the StarLight team a license or allow others to port wherever they wanted. You can't C&D some copyright violators and let other slide.
I MIGHT me confusing this with Patent law. My apologies if I'm just talking garbage.
How ironic, I was just going to let you know you're talking garbage.
Yeah, you're thinking of patent law, where enforcement is necessary to retain rights. There are a few cases where things get muddy (laches and promissory estoppel), but generally speaking, copyrights are retained for their term (however the government defines them), and the holder may decide when and how they wish to enforce those rights.
Incidentally, IMHO, this is probably just an excuse... after all, who wants to say "Yeah, I got bored" or "Too hard, I quit". It's much more dramatic to state you had to shut down for legal reasons...
Which reminds me, NetHackDS? Yeah, I'm done working on that for, err, legal reasons! See, the DevTeam is, uhh... threatening to sue for... uhh... trademark... infringment. Yeah, that's it!
