There's also an argument to be made that the code itself does not infringe on their IP, as this was the lost source code from the old edition of StarCraft (from how I'm reading it in the news). Losing this code specifically made Blizzard restart the project, so it's not even the same project nor a commercially released product.
The former argument is pretty black and white. The latter very tenuous.
That’s not how IP works.
Blizzard didn’t forfeit their rights to the IP at any point. Even selling them a grab bag of stuff that unintentionally included a copy of the source code doesn’t mean the recipient actually received a legal license to the IP.
You can make all the arguments you want, but in the court of law you’re not going to get away with anything that involves giving away another company’s IP, even if they accidentally let you see a copy of it. “Finders keepers” doesn’t work with IP.
And if you don't make an online post about it you could even anonymously leak it to archive.org or something so at least that game won't be yet another that's lost forever thanks to DRM.
Congrats catching that ball that could be worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, would you like a grab bag of team merchandises instead?
