The latest round of the battle between Automattic, owner of WordPress, and WP Engine was won by the latter, with California District Court Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issuing an injunction to prevent Automattic from blocking access to WP Engine to WordPress.org resources and continue to interfere with its plugins.
“While Defendants characterize WP Engine’s harm as self-imposed because it built its business around a website ‘that it had no contractual right to use…’ Defendants’ Role by helping this harm materialize through their recent targeted actions against WPEngine and no other competitors. , cannot be ignored,” she wrote.
Where does all this come from? WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg had publicly complained about trademark violations, alleging that WP Engine was illegitimately monetizing them while misleading consumers into believing that there is a formal affiliation between WP Engine and WordPress. Cease and desist letters were exchanged. Then, WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Mullenweg and Automatic, accusing them of extortion.
Why we care. Many marketing (and news) organizations rely on WordPress, which remains the dominant player in the CMS market. Anything that makes the content creation journey bumpier is unfortunate. Mullenweg has not yet expressed outrage about this decision on his blog, but we are keeping an eye on it.
Dig Deeper: WordPress decides to block WP Engine from accessing its resources
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About the author
Kim Davis is currently an editor at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim became interested in enterprise software ten years ago. His experience spans enterprise SaaS, data-driven city planning, and digital advertising, as well as applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in marketing. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a marketing technology website, which later became a channel of established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as editor-in-chief, rising to editor-in-chief, then editor-in-chief, a position he held until January 2020. Shortly after, he joined Third Door Media in as editorial director at MarTech.
Kim was an assistant editor at a hyper-local New York Times news site, The Local: East Village, and previously worked as an editor at a college publication and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
