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A very public fight has escalated between the two companies and has now turned into a full lawsuit.
WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, has been making headlines lately due to a fight with website hosting provider WP Engine.
It all started when Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress” at an event last month.
WP Engine then sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic – the parent company of WordPress – who in turn sent its own cease-and-desist letter over trademark infringement.
This week, the battle continues as WP Engine has now filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg – who serves as its CEO – accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. So where did it all go wrong?
The history of WordPress and WP Engine
Many will be familiar with the content management system WordPress, which was released in 2003 by Mullenweg and Mike Little. It was designed to enable those with limited tech experience to build websites with minimum set-up, while more tech-savvy individuals could customise it.
WordPress is open-source software, meaning its original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
A few years later, Mullenweg started Automattic, which essentially became the parent company behind the WordPress product and a year later, the platform’s brand name and logo were registered. Automattic is a for-profit company that sells a hosted version of WordPress software.
In 2010, Automattic transferred the WordPress trademark and logo to the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open-source project.
That same year, WP Engine was founded in Texas. The hosting provider specialises in WordPress technology, providing managed hosting as well as e-commerce and enterprise offerings.
The company has grown to have more than 1,000 employees worldwide, including an office in Limerick, Ireland. It has also raised more than $250m in funding over its 14-year history, most of which came from private equity firm Silver Lake.
Why was WP Engine called a ‘cancer’?
In September at a WordPress-focused conference, Mullenweg launched a scathing attack on WP Engine, calling it a “cancer to WordPress”.
He warned that the company capitalises on and profits from WordPress’s free, open-source software, while giving very little back to the open-source ecosystem.
He talked about the ‘Five for the Future’ programme, which allows organisations to pledge to contribute resources to the growth of the WordPress project.
“These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours,” he said in a personal blogpost.
He added that while the hosting provider has good people, the company is controlled by Silver Lake. “Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your open-source ideals. It just wants a return on capital.”
In a separate statement on WordPress’s own site, he said WP Engine is “strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money”.
In response to the comments, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic asking Mullenweg to retract his comments, which the company said are “false, harmful and disparaging”.
What about the WordPress trademark?
Within WP Engine’s cease-and-desist letter, the company said Mullenweg claimed that WP Engine is misusing the WordPress trademark, a claim WP Engine said is false and “reflects a profound misunderstanding of both trademark law and WordPress Foundation’s trademark policy”.
The public battle escalated further when Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter, claiming WP Engine had infringed several trademarks like WordPress and WooCommerce.
The letter alleges that WP Engine has developed a business generating annual revenues of more than $400m “based entirely on extensive and unauthorised uses” of the trademarks.
“Your unauthorised use of our client’s intellectual property has enabled WP Engine to unfairly compete with our client, and has led to unjust enrichment and undue profits,” the letter stated.
Once again Mullenweg took to his personal blog, saying that Automattic has been attempting to make a licensing deal with WP Engine “for a very long time”.
“We offered WP Engine the option of how to pay their fair share: either pay a direct licensing fee or make in-kind contributions to the open-source project,” he said.
“WP Engine has refused to do either and has instead taken to casting aspersions on my attempt to make a fair deal with them.”
Around the same time, WordPress revoked WP Engine’s free access to its resources, claiming the latter attempted to block a core WordPress feature.
Why is WP Engine suing WordPress?
As the back-and-forth continues, WP Engine has now filed a federal lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automattic for alleged libel and attempted extortion.
The suit filed yesterday (2 October) said the case is about “abuse of power, extortion and greed”, claiming that the defendants have been “carrying out a scheme to ban WPE from the WordPress community unless it agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to Automattic for a purported trademark license that WPE does not even need”.
“Defendants’ self-proclaimed war has inflicted harm upon WPE and the entire WordPress community. Worse, it has no end in sight, as Defendants continue their bad acts unabated,” the filing said.
In a post on X, WP Engine added that Mullenweg and Automattic’s “scorched earth campaign” has harmed the entire WordPress ecosystem.
“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the last 10 days has exposed significant conflicts of interests and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust,” it said.
“WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers, and the broader WordPress community.”
In response to WP Engine’s lawsuit, Automattic said the complaint was “flawed from start to finish”. Neal Katyal, who will represent Automattic, said: “The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court’s consideration of their lawsuit.”
Updated, 8.03am, 4 October 2024: This article has been updated to include Automattic’s response to WP Engine’s lawsuit.
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