The saga of WordPress and its corporate squabbles just won’t quit. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and led by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, has filed a counter-lawsuit against WP Engine, a popular hosting provider.
The accusation? WP Engine is deliberately infringing on WordPress’s trademark. According to Automattic, things took a turn when Silver Lake, a private equity firm, pumped $250 million into WP Engine back in 2018.
Emboldened by the cash, WP Engine started branding itself as “The WordPress Technology Company” and rolled out products like “Core WordPress” and “Headless WordPress.” Sound familiar? It’s the same grievance Mullenweg aired publicly last year, when he didn’t shy away from expressing his frustration at WP Engine’s success.
But now, those gripes have been formalized in a courtroom, and they hit a little differently. Automattic’s counter-lawsuit paints a picture of WP Engine not just capitalizing on the WordPress name but doing so in a way that allegedly confuses customers and dilutes the brand.
The filing also throws in a juicy tidbit: Silver Lake reportedly tried to sell WP Engine for a cool $2 billion but couldn’t find a buyer. Ouch. That detail adds a layer of corporate intrigue - did WP Engine’s bold branding moves stem from pressure to justify that valuation?
For those keeping score, this isn’t a new fight. Mullenweg has long argued that WP Engine’s business model - building on WordPress’s open-source foundation while allegedly contributing little back - amounts to freeloading. WP Engine, for its part, has defended its practices and even fired back with its own lawsuit against Automattic, claiming Mullenweg’s public attacks and actions (like temporarily banning WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources) were anti-competitive. The legal volleys are piling up, and the WordPress community is caught in the crossfire, wondering if this is a principled stand or just bad blood dressed up in legalese.
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So, what’s next? Will this be a dramatic sequel to last year’s public feud, a fresh season with new plot twists, or just a tired rehash of old grudges? The courts will decide, but one thing’s clear: the WordPress family drama is far from over. Grab your popcorn.
