People were going back and forth about this on the "What's New in Heroes of Newerth 2.0" quick look that Brad did. I chimed in a couple times, I mainly thought it was amusing how everything in HoN is basically a shameless ripoff, even the new stuff they are doing. 
 
When HoN first came out, their main pull was "HoN is DoTA but modernized." Which basically meant they shamelessly cloned DoTA down to the letter, and didn't change much of anything except for the infrastructure surrounding it. Which succeeded in getting all the hardcore DoTA players to come to their game. However, once they realized that wasn't bringing in any new players, they basically started ripping off everything the team over at Riot are doing with LoL. This is extremely evident to anyone who pays attention, and follows both games closely... 

Which makes this little tidbit I found on the LoL forums even more amusing.
 

"One of the reasons we're being a bit more secretive than previously about all of the cool things we're working on is because we don't want to tip our hand to our competitors who have demonstrated a clear willingness to emulate things that we are doing.

We will always be the innovators in this genre and the things that we are working on will not disappoint."

League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, DOTA 2 -- they should all copy Bloodline Champions if you ask me.

@Icemael Bloodline Champions does look pretty fun. I enjoy this style of gameplay anywhere I can get it, as a player I really don't care who had the idea first as long as the execution is solid and the game is fun.
 
@MAST I see where you're coming from. Think about it, though, I bet every single person who plays Heroes of Newerth has tried League of Legends at some point (why wouldn't they?). This innovation you speak of was simply not appealing to us, that's all. Ripoff or not, we prefer it. Also, for the sake of arguement, could you actually give some examples? What did HoN ripoff from LoL?