The blocked resources in question? Automatic security and features updates and plugin/theme repository access. Matt Mullenweg reasserted his claim that this was a trademark issue. In tandem, WordPress.org updated its Trademark Policy page to forbid WP Engine specifically (way after the Cease & Desist): from “you are free to use [‘WP’] n any way you see fit” to a diatribe:
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.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained attempts to provide a full chronology so far.
Edit:
The WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.
Yeah, open source licenses don’t entitle you to use trademarks.
This looks pretty bad to me.
WP Engine for WordPress.
That seems to be the commonly accepted solution if you look at other 3rd party trademark cases - situations like “RIF is fun for Reddit” coming to mind.RIF did have to change their name though. https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/el8ri3/reddit_is_fun_is_being_renamed_to_rif_is_fun_for/
Yes, because it used to be"Reddit is Fun", which wasn’t okay. That was the point.
Wordoress engine for wordpress ?
Reddit is fun is fun for Reddit. The WP is just WP, just like RIF is just RIF.
So, a fig leaf trademark that banks on the confusion and they make millions of that legitimacy, millions that these middle man kick about 200k upstream for ?
I don’t see how RIF could potentially confuse anyone at all. WP Engine, maybe, but I’m not convinced. I mean, the US trademark office did allow the latter to be trademarked.
It’s an interesting parallel that ultimately RIF was kicked off the platform and the trademark issue in 2020 was just the prelude to the the hostility and removal from the platform and not the real core issue, which profit extraction from the captive audience of these platform
Like JohnEdwa said, using a trademark to refer to someone else’s product is considered nominative fair use: “referencing a mark to identify the actual goods and services that the trademark holder identifies with the mark.”
They’re very obviously using the trademark in a manner that implies endorsement.
That is absolutely trademark infringement.
At most, they just ambiguously used “Powered by WordPress Experts” once. I don’t see how the evidence misleads people into thinking there was an endorsement.
IMO, dumb people confuse stuff all the time, like the Minecraft Gamepedia with the Minecraft Wikia back then. The meager amount of evidence presented does not convince me that WP Engine has done any actual harm to the WordPress brand.
But yeah, the smart way out would’ve been adding a “WP Engine is not associated with WordPress.org”, at least one below the “WP ENGINE®, VELOCITIZE®, TORQUE®, EVERCACHE®, and the cog logo service marks are owned by WPEngine, Inc.” footer. All in the past now, though. At the best both companies are tomfools.
They explicitly call their engine Wordpress more than once in those examples. You cannot do that.
Yes they can. It’s actually WordPress, so it’s nominative.
No, they can’t, because no, it isn’t. That’s what trademarks are for. You can’t use a trademarked name to refer to your competing product.
Open source projects are generally permissive in terms of people repackaging their code for distribution for different platforms within reasonable guidelines, but even that is a sufficient change that they aren’t obligated to allow their trademarks to be used that way.
It is no longer Wordpress once it’s modified. That’s what trademark is for.
I think we should agree to disagree that it was modified enough here.
What does WP stand for then?
I must be old - it’s WordPerfect to me.
Exactly what I thought. I’d love to sit a young person today in front of that blank blue screen with the blinking cursor. Now, I have to go take my pills before bed.
WillPeoplenoticethecashgrab
Wow Matt really looking bad on this one. This just reeks of trying to push out a major business competitor to wordpress.com and abusing control over wordpress.org to do it.
ThePrimeagen invited Matt to explain what’s going on.
TL;DW Matt’s claim is that he tried to get WP Engine to pay for a Trademark license (or whatever it’s called - I’m recalling from watching yesterday), over several months, and they tried to legally block him in every way. Their self-claimed contributions to Wordpress were (as he tells it) that they held conferences where they promoted their own stuff only - code contributions have been minimal.
So the combination of not willing to pay for the trademark + not contributing back (not in code, not in helping the community) is Matt’s reasoning for blocking them from using Wordpress’ resources.
He also mentioned that he has good relations with other Wordpress hosts, so it’s not like he’s trying to block anyone else from hosting, but they were all willing to pay for the use of the Trademark (and/or contribute back).
This is accurate, but also, “minimal” here is 40 hours of code contributions per week compared to Automattic’s near-4000. Additionally, WP Engine is the biggest Wordpress.com competitor.
Wordpress is a security hole anyway, use something else if you have to use plugins for your usecase.
Just not Drupal. Its still pretty bad.
Fuck WordPress, but also it kinda sounds like WordPress is more in the right here.
Nah. WordPress is GPL, they can’t bitch about someone else reselling it. That would be like Linus Thorvalds blocking a company that sells linux distro because he doesn’t like them.
And also wordpress is a piece of trash.
GPL doesn’t give you any rights to trademarks.
It’s been debated to death in the thread linked below. I tend to fall on the side of the nominative fair use, but that’s for lawyer and judge to sort out because I’m neither.
A cursory check of law review tells me the US doesn’t have a uniform nominative fair use test applicable to the resell of goods and that the supreme court has refused to endorse a test creating a lot of inconsistency between circuit court. So everyone in that thread probably right in a different circuit court.
There is no debate.
Nominative fair use has no relevance to a separate, competing product. Nominative fair use gives you permission to use the term in the exact manner they do and no more. Their notice that your version is not “WordPress”, in and of itself, completely nullifies the argument.
There’s always a debate. That why there are court, judges and lawyers. They can sort that out.
There is a debate, and it’s in that thread. I have replied to you there, and you have not yet.
No, there isn’t. You’re just repeating incorrect information.
The second you change how a project works in any way in any context, it is no longer the same product and you are not entitled to use their trademark to reference it.
Functionally, any scenario where there’s any room at all for brand confusion or implied endorsement is trademark infringement. But even if you buy the outrageous lie that what they were doing was somehow ambiguous, as soon as they were contacted and told that their use was unacceptable, that ambiguity goes away.
The second you change how a project works in any way in any context, it is no longer the same product and you are not entitled to use their trademark to reference it.
However, it’s quite plausible that they did not modify the project at all. Instead, they are providing their own servers and dictate how their servers work while the WordPress source code (& binaries) themselves are isolated from any changes. That’s a new service.
There’s a past case where “an independent auto repair shop that specialized in repairing Volkswagen cars and mentioned that fact in their advertising was not liable for trademark infringement so long as they did not claim or imply that they had any business relationship with the Volkswagen company”, which I think holds just as well here.
as soon as they were contacted and told that their use was unacceptable, that ambiguity goes away.
Think that over. If that were true, you’d have endless corporate bullying. Every past “nominative use” case has originated from a trademark holder suing a plaintiff.
(IANAL)
Let’s just keep this conversation to the same thread.
If people post lies about trademark rights multiple places, they should be responded to multiple places.
Yeah, I agree with telling them it, but I also don’t like following up on the same thing in multiple places. I’m putting it here so Inter can respond there later.
There’s still the compelling-ish point of them only contributing 40 hours to the project per week, though.
The GPL doesn’t say you have to contribute anything other than the changes you make. If automattic is not happy with the terms of the GPL they should have picked something else. But then the product wouldn’t be so popular.
Honestly, I don’t see the difference from buying managed service for a software from a random cloud provider. You can go anywhere and get a fully managed postgresql, kubernetes and so many others, most of them probably dont contribute much.
I’m not saying it’s legal, I’m saying it’s part of being “nice”. Matt claims Automattic also gave WP Engine the option to pay the license in contributing development hours.
Wordpress is junk.
