Automattic vs WP Engine: Here’s what we know

There is a heated legal battle going on between Automattic and WP Engine. The conflict is taking place in front of the WordPress community and is causing a stir.

At the center of it all is Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress (and CEO of Automattic). He has publicly addressed hosting provider WP Engine for allegedly “infringing WordPress trademarks.” Additionally, he viewed the company as a “cancer for WordPress” because it took advantage of its open source software without giving back enough to the project.

Legal action has been taken by both companies. A series of tit-for-tat moves have resulted in WP Engine being banned from using the WordPress.org servers.

Events unfold at breakneck speed. To help you stay informed, we’ve put together a timeline of what’s happened so far. We’ll continue to update it as things continue to unfold.

Cease and desist

Automatically to WP Engine

• Automattic claims exclusive commercial rights to the WORDPRESS trademark and ownership of the WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks, citing various U.S. trademark registrations as evidence.
• The letter alleges that WP Engine’s entire business model, which generates more than $400 million in annual revenue, is based on unauthorized use of Automattic’s trademarks.
• Automattic proposes a possible licensing relationship to resolve the matter amicably, but demands immediate cessation of trademark use and substantial compensation (suggesting an 8% royalty on WP Engine’s annual revenue, which is more than $32 million would be).

WP Engine to Automatic

• WP Engine representative Quinn Emanuel sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic on September 23, 2024, addressing alleged misconduct by Automattic CEO Matthew Mullenweg, who threatened a “ nuclear scorched earth approach” if WP Engine Automattic would not pay a large sum of money for its keynote on September 20 at WordCamp US.
• The letter alleges that when WP Engine refused to pay, Mullenweg made false and disparaging statements about WP Engine during his keynote and continued a smear campaign on various platforms, including WordPress.org and the WordPress admin panel.
• WP Engine demands that Automattic stop making false statements, stop interfering with WP Engine’s relationships with employees and customers, and retain all relevant documents and records related to the dispute.

Thursday September 26, 2024

Mullenweg describes the “core issue” in a blog post, “WPE & Trademarks”.

In short, WP Engine violates WordPress trademarks. Moreover, they have been doing that for years. We at Automattic have been trying to get a licensing deal with them for a long time, and all they’ve done is string us along. Finally, I drew a line in the sand, which they have now jumped over.

We offered WP Engine the option to pay their fair share: either pay a direct license fee or make in-kind contributions to the open source project. This isn’t a money grab: the expectation is that any company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars from an open source project has to give something back, and if they don’t, they can’t use the trademarks. WP Engine declined and instead criticized my attempt to make a fair deal with them.

Wednesday September 25, 2024

Mullenweg posts “Charitable Contributions” on his blog to thwart accusations that “… imply that I am a mafia boss trying to extort them …”.

Mullenweg goes to WordPress.org to announce that “WP Engine has been banned from WordPress.org”:

WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don’t have one. I won’t bore you with the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their indiscriminate attempt to block our efforts to inform the broader WordPress community about disabling and locking down a core WordPress feature for profit.

What I will tell you is that pending their legal claims and lawsuits against WordPress.org, WP Engine can no longer access WordPress.org’s resources for free.

WP engine replied to X:

WP engine describes the impact of the ban on their status page.

Tuesday September 24, 2024

Mullenweg posts on X, claiming that WP Engine has removed the news and events widgets from the WordPress dashboard. This would prevent WP Engine’s customers from reading negative stories about the company.

Monday September 23, 2024

WP engine sent a cease and desist letter to Automattic.

The letter claims that Mullenweg threatened WP Engine if they did not pay a large sum of money before his question and answer session at WordCamp US:

Astonishingly, Automattic CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20 keynote speech at the WordCamp US Convention, he would launch his own initiative going to take. -described the “scorched earth nuclear approach” towards WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by repeatedly making false claims discrediting WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has conducted this unlawful campaign against WP Engine in multiple ways, including through his keynote address, on various public platforms such as users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses.

Automatic responds with its own penalty. The letter alleges unauthorized use of intellectual property belonging to the WordPress Foundation and WooCommerce:

WP Engine promotes its services as bringing “WordPress to the masses.” See https://wpengine.com/about-us/. In reality, WP Engine brings almost no aspect of WordPress to the world: it claims to contribute 40 hours per week to WordPress (see https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/wp-engine/ ), while Automattic, on the other hand, contributes almost 4,000 hours per week to WordPress. See https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/automattic/.

Instead, WP Engine’s entire business model is based on using our client’s trademarks – specifically WORDPRESS, WOOCOMMERCE and WOO – to mislead consumers into believing there is a connection between WP Engine and Automattic. Even a cursory review of WP Engine’s website shows numerous examples of such embezzlement.

Automatic also includes an evidence document detailing the alleged violations.