Item — HN Reader

Your honor, I'd like to enter in Exhibit 0 into the records:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYPsyoSbwAACO7X?format=jpg&name=...

Furthermore, apparently Automattic invested money into WP Engine in 2011? Since the principals of Automattic and the Wordpress Foundation are the same, why did they not call trademark violations then (or negotiate a royalty deal for the use of the marks)?

https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-put-1...

This whole thing is bizarre.

3 comments

The part that is so weird to me is that Automattic (Matt is the CEO) owns WordPress.com which is a WP Engine competitor. So many people are confused about WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (The WordPress subreddit even has a sticky about it, since so many newbies are unaware that free self hosted WP exists). Matt is saying that the WordPress Foundation (non profit) gives Automattic an exclusive commercial license to use the trademark. So, WP Engine _may_ legally be in the wrong here (despite the trademark policy saying it was okay for a decade) - but his arguments about how WP Engine is ruining WordPress, is misleading customers, and is competing unfairly is so weird considering his own company does exactly the same. I guess his moral argument is that Automattic contributes so much to the WP source code, and other companies need to be doing the same or purchase a license to support it.

His post about WP Engine not being real wordpress because they disable post revisions to save space is also strange, someone on Reddit mentioned WP Engine has been doing that for over 11 years, so it's not something new. (WordPress.com also reduces features unless the user pays for a higher plan) Automattic was an early investor in WP Engine even, and was seemingly fine with this until now?

>Matt is saying that the WordPress Foundation (non profit) gives Automattic an exclusive commercial license to use the trademark.

Automattic originally registered the trademark. They donated it to the Foundation and retained the exclusive unlimited license for commercial purposes.

Thank you for the clarification, that was not clear from what I had read about this

Out of curiosity, I looked at WP Engine's website, and counted thirty uses of "WordPress" (before I stopped counting), as well as at least a few uses of "WooCommerce". I am only casually following this dispute, but WP Engine does seem to be using the branding. That said, "WordPress" may be descriptive (I'm not sure whether it is).

edit: I did not address the investment component of the parent comment, as that was added after my comment was posted

I agree. The complaint here isn’t about WP, it’s about the full trademark being used without the repeated asterisk being used to call out that it’s a name owned by a different entity and used with permission / under fair use.

For comparison, the text of the screenshotted web page (https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/) now reads:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

This is kind of a wild change. And the change of tone about "WP" aside, it is very strange to make complaints like this on a trademark policy page of all places.

This whole thing is very bizarre and not a great look.

I don’t think it’s a wild change. Explicitly enumerated or not, one might assume that any open-source trademark owner does not allow use of their trademark that implies connection to, or authority over, the root project or that “creates confusion”.

Take a look at the Red Hat Trademark guidelines page, which is based on the Model Trademark Guidelines (CC-BY-4.0) designed for the open-source community. They explicitly mention that you cannot “Use the Red Hat Marks in a way that expresses or implies sponsorship or endorsement by, or affiliation or a relationship with Red Hat when one does not exist.” They also remind you that “Red Hat, at its sole discretion, may terminate or modify your permission at any time. Red Hat retains and reserves all rights to the Red Hat Marks and their use, including the sole right to modify these Guidelines, with immediate or later effect.”

If the WordPress Foundation had explicitly included a similar reminder would you still find the change “wild”?

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/trademark-guidelines-and-pol...

Wow that reads incredibly petty, almost childish. And "billions of revenue"?

Odds that it was written by the CEO himself?

Likely they could buy Automattic if that were true.

Well they probably have made at least 1 billion over the lifetime of the company, it looks like their annual revenue is a couple hundred million. But multiple billions? And forgetting to say "dollars"? Does anyone proofread this stuff?