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 …

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 …

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 …