50 ms·

They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers h

by qlte 6d ago

They were using the trademark on the website to describe WordPress the software project under nomitative fair use in the same way many, many hosting providers have been doing for decades. He openly admitted in online comments to trying (and failing) to extort their CEO in private to give Automattic huge payments, and if they declined that he'd destroy their valuation by cutting off their access and buy them for pennies on the dollar. Among other threats leading up to the lawsuit, which taken together made it look like a blatantly selective punitive measure for cynical reasons. It doesn't help that the word "Wordpress" is used for all sorts of different, but overlapping things: wordpress.com for his private WordPress commercial host competing with WPEngine, wordpress.org for the WordPress Foundation he also controls, WordPress describing the open source GPL licensed project. Google makes things much simpler to avoid misusing their trademarks by splitting Chrome for their commercial product and Chromium for the open source project.

ibejoeb 6d ago
And the part that is being litigated is whether that is, in fact, fair use, correct? I like the comparison to Chrome and Chromium. I don't know the timeline of the whole wordpress IP. At this most it has arguably undergone genericization. That's why I think it's complicated enough that there is merit to arguments on either side.
- adrienne 6d ago
  That's a small part of what's being litigated. The rest of what's being litigated is unfair trade practices, monopolization, promissory estoppel, defamation, and computer fraud/abuse. (Seriously, there are 18 causes of action in the Third Amended Complaint, which is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.233.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... . There are also counterclaims, which are here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... )
zrn900 5d ago
> nomitative fair use No, WP Engine has been highlighting WordPress and using the word in a way that it did make a lot of non-technical people believe that WP Engine was 'WordPress'. In that, Mullenweg has a point.

by qlte 6d ago

ibejoeb 6d ago

And the part that is being litigated is whether that is, in fact, fair use, correct? I like the comparison to Chrome and Chromium. I don't know the timeline of the whole wordpress IP. At this most it has arguably undergone genericization. That's why I think it's complicated enough that there is merit to arguments on either side.

adrienne 6d ago
That's a small part of what's being litigated. The rest of what's being litigated is unfair trade practices, monopolization, promissory estoppel, defamation, and computer fraud/abuse. (Seriously, there are 18 causes of action in the Third Amended Complaint, which is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.233.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... . There are also counterclaims, which are here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43... )

zrn900 5d ago

> nomitative fair use No, WP Engine has been highlighting WordPress and using the word in a way that it did make a lot of non-technical people believe that WP Engine was 'WordPress'. In that, Mullenweg has a point.