Latest Posts

Automattic and WooCommerce’s cease and desist letter to WP Engine and others

Published by Richard Best

The saga continues

The saga does indeed continue. On 23 September 2024, Automattic Inc and WooCommerce Inc’s lawyers sent their own cease and desist letter to WP Engine, Silver Lake, and others. To me, these are the key points and assertions:

  • Automattic/WooCommerce own all intellectual property rights in and to the WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks and the exclusive commercial rights to the WORDPRESS trademark;
  • Automattic/WooCommerce assert that WP Engine has violated their intellectual property rights by, they say, doing the following (and note I’m quoting):
    • “promoting its services as bringing ‘WordPress to the masses'” (this is followed by reference to the number of hours WP Engine contributes per week versus the number Automattic contributes each week);
    • “WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using [Automattic/WooCommerce’s] trademarks – particularly WORDPRESS, WOOCOMMERCE, and WOO – to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic” (there’s a reference to examples in Exhibit B which, most unfortunately from a transparency perspective, is not included in the published version of the cease and desist letter);
    • “WP Engine has developed a business generating annual revenues of over $400 million, which has been based entirely on extensive and unauthorized uses of [the] trademarks”.

The cease and desist letter goes on to say:

    • “WP Engine’s infringing commercial uses of [the] trademarks have created consumer confusion as to whether WP Engine is affiliated with [Automattic/WooCommerce]; including many references to WP Engine being ‘WordPress Engine’.”
    • “Negative reviews and comments regarding WP Engine and its offerings are imputed to [Automattic/WooCommerce], thereby tarnishing [their] brands, harming their reputation, and damaging the goodwill [they have] established in [the] marks. [The] unauthorized use of [their] intellectual property has enabled WP Engine to unfairly compete with [them], and has led to unjust enrichment and undue profits.”

The cease and desist letter also asserts that WP Engine has “violated the terms of [its] WordCamp US Sponsorship Agreement, which specified … that ‘any use of the WordPress trademarks is subject to the WordPress Trademark Policy … .” The letter asserts that WP Engine “repeatedly and intentionally violated the WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy’s prohibition on the ‘use [of] the[] [WordPress marks] as part of a product, project, service, domain name, or company name’.

The cease and desist letter says Automattic/WooCommerce are willing to amicably resolve the matter, including through a licensing relationship for use of the trademarks, but until such time as a licence is in place, WP Engine must (among other things):

  • stop all unauthorised use of the trademarks;
  • remove offerings making unauthorised use of the trademarks from any websites and social media accounts under WP Engine’s control; and
  • pay Automattic/WooCommerce compensation, “the specific amount of which may be ascertained once we have an accounting from you … (even a mere 8% royalty on WP Engine’s $400+ million in annual revenue equates to more than $32 million in annual lost licensing revenue for our Client)”.

Descriptive and nominative fair use

I am not a US trademark lawyer, but to my mind much of this ‘case’ falls to be considered by reference to the defences to infringement known as ‘descriptive fair use’ and ‘nominative fair use’ (nominative fair use being the more likely defence).

The International Trademark Association describes ‘descriptive fair use’ and ‘nominative fair use’ as follows:

“Descriptive fair use permits use of another’s trademark to describe the user’s products or services, rather than as a trademark to indicate the source of the goods or services. This usually is appropriate where the trademark concerned has a descriptive meaning in addition to its secondary meaning as a trademark. For example, WD-40 Company’s use of the term “inhibitor” was found to be descriptive fair use of the registered mark THE INHIBITOR when used to describe a long-term corrosion inhibitor (WD-40) product.

Nominative fair use permits use of another’s trademark to refer to the trademark owner’s goods and services associated with the mark. Nominative fair use generally is permissible as long as: (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used; and (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner. For example, one could refer to “the professional basketball team from Chicago,” but it is simpler and more understandable to say the Chicago Bulls. Here, the trademark is used only to describe the thing rather than to identify its source, and does not imply sponsorship or endorsement. … .”

I have not seen the exhibits to Automattic/WooCommerce’s cease and desist letter and so cannot comment on all the circumstances in which the companies are asserting that WP Engine has infringed their trademarks or rights as exclusive licensee. However, as a long-time WP Engine customer who is therefore pretty familiar with WP Engine’s website and marketing, it strikes me that at least a good deal of WP Engine’s uses of the words ‘WordPress’, ‘WooCommerce’ and ‘Woo’ are descriptive/nominative in nature and therefore non-infringing. It is certainly not within Automattic/WooCommerce’s power to prevent all descriptive/nominative uses of those words by WP Engine. Context is key. And I do note that WPEngine says things like this on its website:

Who created WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is developed and supported by Automattic, the creators of WordPress.co and Jetpack. The plugin’s development teams also work with hundreds of independent contributors to provide regular updates, new features, and improved security measures that keep your store up-to-date and protected.

And when WP Engine talks about the likes of ‘WooCommerce hosting’ and that the ‘path to WooCommerce® success starts here’, the webpage states expressly in the footer that WooCommerce is a registered trademark of Automattic Inc.

Some reflections

Now, we could get lost in the minutiae of this cease and desist letter for hours or days. But let’s not. Instead, I’ll just make these remarks:

  • In my view there is nothing wrong with using the word ‘WordPress’ descriptively to refer to the content management system that ‘WordPress’ is, including in the context of a commercial offering. That is extraordinarily commonplace, in all manner of commercial contexts.
  • The same applies to descriptive uses of the term ‘WooCommerce’ (e.g., the ecosystem of WooCommerce plugins).
  • In one sense, WP Engine has brought WordPress to the masses (or at least a portion of the masses). Its number of users and its revenue would seem to be evidence of that, not to mention its support for the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystems.
  • It seems hyperbolic to assert that WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using [Automattic/WooCommerce’s] trademarks to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic. Personally, I have never perceived there to be any such association. Perhaps that reflects my historic knowledge of the WordPress ecosystem, but I just don’t see this. I see the two companies for what they are in the hosting space: competitors.
  • It seems fanciful to suggest that negative reviews of WP Engine are imputed to Automattic. I accept that I don’t know what I don’t know, and of course the exhibits to the cease and desist letter have not been published so we cannot consider them, but I also note that it does not necessarily follow from the existence of some confusion among a probably very small number of the massive community of WordPress users that WP Engine has infringed the trademarks.
  • In terms of the reference to the Trademark Policy and the quoted excerpt from it, I note that Automattic itself has said on ‘X’: ‘We know there is confusion around WordPress trademarks and fair usage. We’re working to get guidance out ASAP’.
  • If WP Engine is misusing the WordPress/WooCommerce/Woo trademarks (and I’m not saying it is), should other WordPress-related businesses be worried? For example, plenty of other WordPress hosting and commercial plugin providers use ‘WooCommerce’ and ‘Woo’ in ways similar to WP Engine. Will we see challenges to them too?
  • Automattic appears to be asserting exclusive rights in relation to commercial use of the ‘WordPress’ trademark, including demanding payment of a large sum of money, when ‘WordPress’ the CMS that we know and love has, for a very long time, been the creation of a large community of contributors. Whilst Automattic is of course the major contributor (for which I’m sure we are all grateful), Automattic does not own all the source code, and does not control large numbers of WordPress contributors. Whilst these points are separate to Automattic’s rights as exclusive licensee of the WordPress trademarks, I make them because this is not a typical situation where a company seeks to assert exclusive trademark-related rights in relation to a product or brand of which it is the sole owner or creator. Questions will doubtless arise as to what the community of developers thinks of this. I assume Automattic is taking that into account.
  • This saga has shifted from an attack at WCUS said to be based on a poor level of contribution by WP Engine back to the community (at that point there was zero reference to trademark issues), to an attack based on asserted trademark infringement, with a demand by one company that has commercialised WordPress for payment of a huge amount of money from a competitor. Perceived ‘insufficient giving back’ by the competitor may be driving some of this, but one might infer from the demand for payment of annual lost trademark licensing revenue that it’s about more than that. Make of that what you will.

You might think I’ve penned this post with the goal of supporting WP Engine over MM and Automattic, given that I’m a long-time WP Engine customer, but I haven’t. As I’ve said many times before, I have a huge amount of respect and gratitude for MM and Automattic, and no one can doubt Matt’s own contributions to WordPress and his charitable contributions to other causes. Any attempts to smear his personal character would be offensive and should, I suggest, be resisted. But, as a long time WordPress user and member (through this site) of the WordPress community, what’s happening here does not sit well with me, from either legal or commercial perspectives.

My heartfelt hope is that none of this gets near a court. My suggestion is for the two companies to appoint a highly-skilled commercial mediator with knowledge of open source communities to help them chart a way forward.

Update: I have now seen the exhibits to Automattic/WooCommerce’s cease and desist letter, as they have been posted on the Automattic website. They make no difference to my views. I can only see one reference to ‘WordPress Engine’ in the context of a third party partner listing on the WPEngine website. That can (and should) be amended to refer to WP Engine instead but there is no evidence in the exhibits of widespread use by WP Engine of the term ‘WordPress Engine’. All other examples of this term being used are on third party sites. I see no evidence in the exhibits on which WP Engine can be held responsible for that.

WordPress Foundation changes Trademark Policy to criticise WP Engine

Published by Richard Best

The WordPress Trademark Policy

Back in 2015, I described the WordPress Trademark Policy as it then stood in Using the WordPress trademarks for your business, product or service. That post:

  • explained what trademarks are;
  • discussed Automattic Inc’s WordPress trademarks and how they were being enforced;
  • described Automattic’s transfer of WordPress trademarks to the WordPress Foundation; and
  • discussed the care that’s required when using WordPress trademarks, contrasting that with the use of ‘WP’ or ‘Press’.

Now, as Matt’s/Automattic’s criticisms of WP Engine continue, the WordPress Foundation’s Trademark Policy has been updated, as follows:

For the reasons I’ll discuss below, these changes are interesting, surprising, and in my view completely unnecessary.

WordPress Foundation owns trademark, but Automattic is exclusive commercial licensee

First, we learn that Automattic is the exclusive licensee of the WordPress trademark for commercial use. Perhaps others were aware of this. I was not.

Let’s go back in time a little. As I explained in my post in 2015:

“On 9 September 2010, Matt announced that Automattic had transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, “the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity”. As Matt noted on his blog, this meant that the most central piece of WordPress’s identity had become fully independent from any company.

This was, as Matt noted, a pretty dig deal, as Automattic – a commercial organisation – had donated one of its most valuable assets and ceded control of it to a non-profit organisation.

Why did Automattic do this? This wasn’t, after all, the approach that most commercial enterprises would take to a valuable business asset. The answer to why Automattic did it is this: it was in the best interests of the wider WordPress community. This is how Matt put it:

‘Automattic might not always be under my influence, so from the beginning I envisioned a structure where for-profit, non-profit, and not-just-for-profit could coexist and balance each other out. It’s important for me to know that WordPress will be protected and that the brand will continue to be a beacon of open source freedom regardless of whether any company is as benevolent as Automattic has been thus far.’”

Returning now to 2024, I find it somewhat interesting that, despite the WordPress Foundation owning the WordPress trademark, it has (it appears) granted an exclusive licence to Automattic for commercial use, with the right to sublicense use of the trademark. In substance, this seems to confer complete control on use of the WordPress trademark for commercial purposes on Automattic. I am not implying or insinuating anything in pointing this out. I just find it interesting. You be the judge.

Use of ‘WP’

As you can see from the tracked comparison above, the Trademark Policy used to say that the abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and people could use it in any way they see fit. Now, whilst the Policy still states that the abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, we see the Policy trying to tell people not to use ‘WP’ in a way that confuses people, from which it launches into another attack on WP Engine.

To castigate WP Engine by reference only to the company not having donated to the WordPress Foundation is surprising. The company has clearly done a range of other things to contribute to the community, as I discussed in Thoughts on the attack on WP Engine, from hosting and sponsoring events, to maintaining free plugins, Torque, Local, and a rich Resource Center).

Neither the WordPress Foundation nor Automattic is legally entitled to tell people what to do with the letters ‘WP’. There is no trademark over those letters in relation to WordPress and they have been in wide use for at least 15 years.

As for the notion that ‘WP Engine’ has been confused for ‘WordPress Engine’, that seems to be pushing the bounds of credulity. As a long-time customer of WP Engine, I am familiar with their brand and how it has evolved over time. I have never confused ‘WP Engine’ for ‘WordPress Engine’, and it has always been clear to me that they are a WordPress host, competing with the likes of Bluehost, Kinsta, GoDaddy and all the other WordPress hosts out there, including WordPress.com itself.

Did the company choose a name that helps people realise it specialises in WordPress hosting? Yes, but in my view there was nothing wrong with that. Many, many companies have done exactly that over the years with all manner of WordPress-related businesses and interests. Here are some examples:

WPBeginner
WPMU DEV
WPForms
WPWeb Infotech
WPRiders
WPExplorer
WPCrafter
WP Rocket
WP Mail SMTP
WP Job Manager
WP All Import
WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin)
WPCustomize
WPEverest
WP Activity Log
WP-Optimize
WPSiteCare
WP Buffs
WP All Import
WP Media
WP Simple Pay
WP Reset
WP User Frontend
WP Quiz
WPRocket
WPLift
WPFusion
WPTavern
WPTouch
WP and Legal Stuff

A short time ago, Automattic posted on ‘X’ to say:

“We want to make this clear: Using ‘WP’ is not a trademark issue.”

Yes, correct. But if that’s the case, why amend the Trademark Policy in the way shown above? In my view, there was no need to do that.

WP Engine’s response to the attack upon it

Published by Richard Best

What a difference 24 hours makes

Well, it’s amazing – but not surprising – what can happen in 24 hours. Yesterday I posted Thoughts on the attack on WP Engine in which I gave my own (and deliberately somewhat muted) reflections on the attack on WP Engine. In a nutshell, ‘not cool’.

I sensed what would be happening within WP Engine and Silver Lake, and I expressed my hope that legal action would not follow:

“My hope is that the inevitable tension that will now exist between you can be resolved for the benefit of your respective customers and the wider community. None of us needs it. And Silver Lake/WP Engine, my plea to you is to keep your hounds at bay, and address this problem in a way that best serves your customers. My suggestion is that you can achieve this with open and honest communication with the community, without resorting to anything stronger. I believe your customers (myself included) will want to see unity, and nothing that results in further division. Please close the chasm, rather than deepen it.”

Of course, when I wrote that, I was not aware of everything set out in the cease and desist letter from WP Engine’s lawyers (which, given its gravity, I will not repeat here). If what they say is true (and if it weren’t, they’d be risking a defamation claim) then, well, it’s hardly surprising that the hounds have been unleashed. ‘Nuclear’ has been met with a correspondingly powerful response.

Will good sense prevail?

I remain of the view, though, that this matter can be resolved without recourse to the courts, and I sincerely hope that that is how this story ends.

I think we should make no mistake though: this is the most serious issue to occur between significant players in the WordPress community since the community’s inception, and it’s happening between two of its most influential and competitive participants. For the benefit of WordPress and the ecosystem that surrounds and nurtures it, I hope good sense can prevail because, if this matter is allowed to get to the courts, nothing good will come from it other than vindication or who is right and who is wrong and, quite possibly, who has to pay certain sums to the other. That may be pleasing to one or other company but will do nothing for WordPress. It will sow further division among the community, it will unsettle those with loyalties to both Matt/Automattic and WP Engine (I suspect many WP Engine customers are in that boat, myself included) and it could result in a loss of business for both companies.

How this can probably be brought to a swift close is obvious. But I don’t like pointing out the obvious, so I won’t.

Thoughts on the attack on WP Engine

Published by Richard Best

Downward criticism of community members

The WordPress community is no stranger to one of the project’s founders criticising those he considers to be behaving egregiously. Those of us who have been using WordPress for a long time will recall the strong and sometimes prolonged criticism of the likes of Chris Pearson, Envato, GoDaddy, and others. But arguably they all pale in comparison to the attack on WP Engine at the most recent WordCamp in Portland, Oregon (made all the more bizarre by the fact that WP Engine was sponsoring the event and had numerous staff attending).

In days gone by, most criticisms arose from perceived violations of the GPL or other open source licensing arrangements. In many cases, the criticisms were understandable. If you use WordPress and violate the GPL (by, for example, not licensing modifications appropriately when you distribute them), then you shouldn’t be surprised if someone complains, even loudly.

The attack on WP Engine

The attack on WP Engine was of a completely different ilk. After explaining the ‘tragedy of the commons’, Matt let rip. The attack was premised on WP Engine giving back to the WordPress community a small number of hours (40 hours or so a week) versus Automattic’s asserted 3786, despite the companies being “roughly the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half-a-billion dollars per year.” He went on to say:

“WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page. But the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management.

Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your open source ideals. It just wants return on capital.

So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to go vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers.”

…

“I’m making the case for why this is, might be the last WordCamp you see WP Engine have a booth at.”

Having referred to and shown a picture of the Managing Director of Silver Lake, he said “it’s just like a schoolyard bully”, and then referred to the slowing growth of WordPress for a few years (starting in 2018) and stated “you can actually map it pretty well to the revenue growth of a company like WP Engine” (!).

And then this:

“Think about this. If you ran a business, normally you’d spend part of your budget on R&D. How great is it that if you could get all the software for free, don’t spend a single dollar on it, or spend 40 hours a week, so call that, you know, $100,000 a year on it. And you can make $450,000,000 per year off it.

That’d be pretty sweet, right? It’s a pretty good business. But then what happens to that software? If you’re taking the business from companies like the other ones I mentioned, Automatic, Newfold, etc. that like, actually put back to that software, now those companies are fighting with like, one hand tied behind their back.

I’ve got a hundred full time people working on core and things in the commons. I could have those hundred people working on getting more customers for WordPress.com or something like that. But they’re not. They’re working on things that benefit all of us. That belong to all of us. That are part of open source.”

Now, why have I bothered writing a post about this attack? Because, on the one hand, I have a huge amount of respect for Matt and all he has done with WordPress, achieved with Automattic, and done for the community. I will always think that and I’m grateful to him. But, on the other, I am also a long-time WP Engine customer. They do security well. They handle backups, staging sites, etc well. They do a range of other things well. I’ve always received good customer service. And, in the past when I’ve compared what they provide with competing offerings, I’ve thought you get what you pay for. For example, their site management interface is way, way better than many of the cheap-as-chips hosts out there.

Round 2 after WordCamp

After the WordCamp, Matt had another crack at WP Engine in a blog post, titled “WP Engine is not WordPress“. He started by saying this:

“Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion”

The post purports to “offer a specific, technical example of how they [Silver Lake] break the trust and sanctity of our software’s promise to users to save themselves money”.

The assertion that WP Engine is not WordPress, and this technical example, is based on the fact that WP Engine turns off the revisions system by default.

Reflections

For what it’s worth, my take on all this is as follows:

  • This attack on WP Engine has nothing to do with any violation of the GPL itself and cannot be justified on the basis of any supposed spirit of the GPL. There is no suggestion that WP Engine is not respecting the GPL, and WP Engine is under no legal obligation to contribute any specified number or ratio or proportion of hours back to the community.
  • Instead, the attack on WP Engine represents a shift from prior criticisms of others, largely based on perceived violations of the GPL, to an attack based on perceived insufficient respect for community or moral values, because there’s too much taking and not enough giving. Yet, what this ‘morality’ requires is being set unilaterally and without a vote from the community. Who would have thought that, if you didn’t contribute a number of hours per week over a given threshold referable to your revenue, you would be pounded in a public forum?
  • The attack has been made by the leader of one company that competes directly with the company that’s the target of the attack, and expressly in circumstances where, he says, companies who contribute more are “fighting with like, one hand tied behind their back”. There’s an obvious sense of unfairness, moral outrage, or competitive disadvantage by those doing ‘the right thing’.
  • Again, however, as far as I know, WP Engine has not violated the GPL. It has not broken any rule binding on those in the massive WordPress community. It has no contract with the WordPress Foundation or anyone else requiring it to contribute X number of hours per week to the community. It champions the use of WordPress, and yes for profit, but so too do many other companies, with nowhere near the proportion of ‘giving back to the community’ that Automattic gives back. Automattic is awesome for what it does for the community, but how many companies can or do match it on a proportional basis by reference to their revenue?
  • To suggest that WP Engine is not WordPress and that they’re ‘profiting from the confusion’ is, I suggest, non-sensical. Of course it’s WordPress. Turning off a feature doesn’t mean users are not using WordPress and to suggest otherwise is misleading. WordPress.com itself does not make all features available to all users on all pricing plans, and over the years its interface has been quite different to regular WordPress. To my mind, not being able to install plugins on lower priced plans on WordPress.com makes for much less of a ‘WordPress’ experience than turning off revisions (which, personally, I’ve never used and never need).
  • In any event, the turning off of revisions was not a Silver Lake decision. WP Engine turned off revisions by default long before the Silver Lake investment in 2018.
  • And let’s not forget that WP Engine purchased and now maintains and makes available to the community the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, which has 2+ million active installations. And yes, there’s a Pro version from which profits are made, but so what? That’s commonplace. WP Engine also maintains or is co-contributor to the Better Search Replace plugin, the WP Migrate Lite plugin, the Genesis Custom Blocks plugin, the Genesis Connect for WooCommerce plugin, the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin, the Faust.js plugin, and the Pattern Manager plugin, all of which are in the WordPress plugins repository.
  • Overall, this all just strikes me as a bit sad, and now I’m not sure what to think as a result of the seed that has been planted. Does Matt have good reason to feel there’s an imbalance between some of the big players in the hosting community on the issue of giving back? Well, if the figures he presented are accurate and take all other material contributions into account, then yes, it would seem so. Could WP Engine do more for the community? Yes, it probably could. But is the company complying with the GPL? Yes. Has the company given hosting-related confidence to massive numbers of WordPress users over the years? Yes, undoubtedly it has, myself included. Has that assisted with WordPress uptake? Surely yes. Does WP Engine support the community in other ways? Yes (including sponsorship, free plugins, Torque, Local, and a rich Resource Center).

That all leads to this question? In the circumstances set out above, was it cool to name and shame WP Engine? For me, that’s a rhetorical question, but you be the judge.

Thank you

I’ll end this by simply saying thank you to both Matt and WP Engine for what you do for WordPress (along with all the other contributors). Everyone knows what Matt has done and continues to do, both personally and through Automattic, and that contribution will most probably always be unparalleled. Thank you. Seriously, thank you. You’re a legend (and, Silver Lake, WP Engine would most probably not exist if it weren’t for Matt’s co-founding and leadeship of WordPress, so please bear that in mind). At the same time, I’ve paid for services from Automattic in the past, I’m an ongoing customer of WP Engine (and have been for more than a decade), and am grateful to both.

My hope is that the inevitable tension that will now exist between you can be resolved for the benefit of your respective customers and the wider community. None of us needs it. And Silver Lake/WP Engine, my plea to you is to keep your hounds at bay, and address this problem in a way that best serves your customers. My suggestion is that you can achieve this with open and honest communication with the community, without resorting to anything stronger. I believe your customers (myself included) will want to see unity, and nothing that results in further division. Please close the chasm, rather than deepen it.

A new era in document automation with WordPress

Published by Richard Best

Like so many others, I’ve seen enough to be convinced that AI is here to stay, that it will get exponentially more powerful over time, and that the technology will transform many areas of work.

Of course, document automation has been making inroads into the drafting of many kinds of documents for a long time. The value of automation, and the efficiencies and cost savings it can bring, are undeniable.

Now that AI is on our doorstop and bashing down the door, what does this mean for orthodox document automation? With orthodox document automation, typically we create docx templates with ‘direct replacement’ merge tags and ‘conditional content’ merge tags that are processed to produce a customised document when someone fills out a form or answers a questionnaire. Another way of doing it is to convert html output to a docx file. In each case, the process (when done properly) ensures consistent and predictable outputs. With AI, the question becomes whether this tried and true method will be overtaken.

My current view is that, at the moment, AI tools like ChatGPT are too variable and inconsistent in what they produce to completely replace orthodox document automation, at least for documents like medium to high risk contracts. That may change to a lesser or greater degree in the future when we’re better able to train AI tools on our current documents. At the moment, though, asking the likes of ChatGPT to draft something like a master services agreement for IT services for a government or commercial client is highly unlikely to produce what you need.

However, I believe there are potentially considerable advantages in amalgamating orthodox document automation with AI content generation. In other words, we can leverage the best of both approaches within a single document automation tool.

Recently I’ve explored this in detail in the context of WordPress:

Here’s a quick video overview too:

For more, see the GravityMerge website.

Document automation is coming to a WordPress installation near you

Published by Richard Best

WordPress and Gravity Forms are both awesome. But, for a long time, there’s been a gap in what the ecosystem can do in the realm of document automation. This has been the case because either:

  • you had to pipe your data to or otherwise rely on third party hosted services; or
  • your options were limited to PDF output, or document output that did not accommodate conditional content.

Solutions that require you to pipe your data to or otherwise rely on third party hosted services can result in a loss of control over your data, as well as potentially expensive monthly or annual fees. Solutions that limit you to PDF output restrict what you or your clients or customers can do with the generated output. And solutions that enable output to .doc or .docx formats but do not support conditional content are just too limited for any use case where chunks of content need to be included or excluded depending on what a person enters into a form.

GravityMerge is changing all that, and it’s doing it in multiple ways that support the needs of a wide range of industries, professions (including the legal profession which has particular needs when it comes to hierarchical numbering styles) and use cases:

  • It’s enabling the production of automated documentary outputs based on underlying Word/docx templates that contain direct merge tags and conditional merge tags, bringing to WordPress true and powerful document automation that benefits from the richness of Microsoft Word document formatting.
  • It’s enabling the production of automated documentary outputs where conditional content processing is done within Gravity Forms itself, through the use of either a form’s conditional logic or Gravity Forms’ own conditional merge tags, with the conditional output you see on your confirmation screen or persistent confirmation page being available for download in docx format.
  • It’s enabling you to use a customised “all fields” merge tag in your form confirmations that supports the inclusion of HTML fields and the exclusion of empty fields, together with a document download option.
  • It’s enabling you to see legal-style hierarchical/ordered numbering in the classic editor, block editor, Gravity Forms rich text paragraph field, Gravity Forms confirmation screen, and HTML-to-DOCX downloads.

Oh, and for those who like to throw in a bit of ChatGPT-style AI, with GravityWiz’s awesome OpenAI plugin you can get OpenAI to process content for you based on how someone answers questions in your form, and include the ChatGPT-style output within your automated output that you make available for download.

To learn more and get your hands on these plugins, take a look at GravityMerge.

The perils for plugin businesses with no or minimal terms of use

Published by Richard Best

WordPress is a fantastic content management system. In the some 18 years that I’ve been using it, I’ve seen it go from a glorified blogging engine to a fully fledged content management system. I’ve seen the development and growth of theme and plugin businesses, and I’ve witnessed and contributed to the often arcane debates about the GPL. Through this site, I’ve also tried to help WordPress theme and plugin businesses with the various legal issues that can crop up in the use of WordPress and the running of their businesses.

I will soon be launching my own plugin business. The plugins that will be available for purchase all revolve around Gravity Forms (an awesome plugin that I’ve been using since 2010). If you’d like to be told when I launch, feel free to sign up here:

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

In the past I whipped up an automated terms of use builder for theme and plugin businesses (you had to purchase the ‘business package’ of A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL to get access), and I’m using that as a starting point for the terms of use for my own forthcoming plugin business.

I thought I’d also take a look around to see what other plugin businesses are doing these days. Some have solid terms of use, as you’d expect, but what I wasn’t expecting to find was some stellar plugin businesses who have no terms of use at all (!) or only minimal terms. In some cases, there are no contractual terms of use on their website, and no ‘click to access terms’ process during the checkout process.

My hand-on-heart recommendation to these businesses is to get decent terms of use in place as soon as possible. Why? Because without them, you are not protecting yourself and you’re exposing your business to undue risk. For example, if you don’t have terms of use:

  • you may not be dealing properly (or at all) with copyright and licensing (not only of the plugins, but of other content on your site);
  • you will not be creating a right for yourself to discontinue a customer’s access to support and updates if that customer decides to make your products available on another website for others to download;
  • you will not be specifying the customer’s loss of a right to withdraw from the contract upon download or use of a plugin (relevant in some countries, such as EU member states, but not others);
  • you will not be putting any limits on the volume of support you may be asked to provide;
  • you won’t be putting contractual controls in place regarding access keys and access credentials;
  • you won’t be setting out clear contractual provisions relating to fees, renewals, refunds, price changes and the like;
  • you won’t be dealing with account termination if a customer uses your products unlawfully or for an unlawful purpose or if they are abusive to you or your staff;
  • you won’t be limiting your liability and warranties and you won’t be obtaining any indemnities from your customers for losses you may incur through their breaching your rights;
  • you won’t be dealing with termination of the arrangements in place with your customers;
  • you won’t be securing a right to unilaterally amend terms in place with your customers; and
  • you won’t be specifying governing law and the country or state whose courts will hear disputes.

You also run the risk of an implied contract coming into existence when people purchase your plugins, or the prospect of people making arguments about what you’re obliged to do based on what they say are implied contractual terms.

The difference between not having terms of use that address the matters listed above, and having proper terms of use, is a bit like the difference between finding yourself in rough seas in a flimsy boat and without a life jacket versus being in a navy vessel that’s armoured-up and prepared for whatever may come. Not having terms of use can also be unhelpful for your customers, as there are no clear contractual guide rails and they may be left wondering what they can and cannot do. All up, a pretty unsatisfactory situation and not one, I suggest, that plugin business owners should find themselves in.

Attention WordPress course creators – mad cyber week deal on The 5-Step Legal Plan for Online Course Creators

Published by Richard Best

I suspect many of us, myself included, are now suffering from Black Friday to Cyber Monday fatigue. So I’ll keep this brief.

For a very limited time, I’m offering full access to The 5-Step Legal Plan for Online Course Creators for the madly discounted price of $29. That’s a whopping 66% off the normal price. The course helps you to protect your course content, avoid being sued, comply with important laws, and keep what you earn in your pocket, in under 90 minutes!

This includes walking you through quick and automated creation of your own copyright statement, disclaimer, terms of use, and privacy statement.

Oh, and you’ll get all 6 of our ebooks too, which cover protecting your course content, using others’ content safely, licensing content to get promotion, mastering your email marketing, having a privacy statement, and shielding yourself from lawsuits.

This deal will never be repeated again, so be quick. There’s never been a better time or place for course creators to get their legal house in order.

GET THE DEAL HERE AND NOW, before it vanishes.

(The timer on the sales page is a real timer, not one of those poxy, misleading timers that restart when you do a browser refresh. I should really write a blog post about those, as in some countries they can violate consumer protection laws.)

What all online course creators need to know about the legal stuff

Published by Richard Best

“Make sure you get the legal stuff right with your online course.” “Huh?”, the course creator responds. “What do I need to know, and why?”

It’s all too easy for course creators to come up with and validate a great idea, create their course, get on with their marketing, and whack their course up on a course platform, without giving much if any thought to the legal stuff. Unfortunately, not getting the legal stuff right – getting the legal stuff wrong – can have very negative consequences. With that in mind, and to help you start thinking about the things you need to know, I’ve whipped up “17 practical legal steps to help you create great course content, protect yourself, and keep your money”.

It’s free, and you can find it on Law of Course (just scroll to the bottom). Hope you find it useful.

Online Courses and Legal Stuff

Published by Richard Best

Let me introduce to Online Courses and Legal Stuff

Over time I’ve written quite a bit about legal issues associated with the use of WordPress. I’m still interested in the topic but am taking a further pause from it to focus on legal issues associated with online course creation. Borrowing from the name for this site, I’m calling my new site Online Courses and Legal Stuff.

Now, many WordPress users are also interested in creating online courses, or building themes and plugins that support online courses. For this reason, I’m expecting to be writing about WordPress from time to time on Online Courses and Legal Stuff and, as such, it seems relevant to announce Online Courses and Legal Stuff here, on WP and Legal Stuff.

Come on over

If you’re interested in the legal issues associated with online course creation, come on over to Online Courses and Legal Stuff. As you’ll see, I’ve designed the homepage as a landing page.

If you’re interested in the Online Courses and Legal Stuff blog. Here’s a list of posts to date (latest post first):

If you’d like to join the Online Courses and Legal Issues Facebook group, it’d be great to have you on board.

And if you’re interested in online course creation and would like me to explore particular issues in one or more blog posts, feel free to let me know via the contact form here on WP and Legal Stuff.

Have a great day.