Blizzard is now claiming that World of Warcraft bot author Michael Donnelly has made $2.8 million by selling his controversial Glider software, according to recent motions filed in court and mirrored on GamePolitics.

Donnelly, the author of popular World of Warcraft bot Glider--a downloadable tool that automatically plays the massively multiplayer game for users--was sued by Blizzard in February of 2007.

Both sides have since been locked in a legal battle, with Blizzard claiming that Donnelly knowingly infringed on its copyright, in addition to breaking World of Warcraft's End User License Agreement.

"Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time," said Blizzard in a legal statement filed last week.

Donnelly claims that his program does not violate Blizzard's copyright because it never makes a true copy of the game client.

"Blizzard permits its licensees to load the WoW game client software into RAM to play WoW. As such, Blizzard's licensees cannot violate Blizzard's exclusive rights under the Copyright Act to make copies simply by loading a copy of the program into RAM to play WoW," reads one section of Donnelly's retort.

The MMO Glider program sells for $25, with an optional $5 subscription available that provides additional functionality.

"We are fans of the game that want to try out a lot of different things," reads a section of the MMO Glider website.

"Getting a bunch of characters to 70 is a pain. Getting money to equip them is a pain. Doing big instances, Battlegrounds, raids, and generally socializing in the game is fun. We use the Glider to skip the painful parts and have more fun. Someone suggested we sell it, so.."