[HN Gopher] Response to WP Engine's Meritless Lawsuit
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Response to WP Engine's Meritless Lawsuit
Author : kif
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-10-03 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (automattic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (automattic.com)
| rodgerd wrote:
| Yesterday: "My lawyer says I can say what I want."
|
| Today: "We have hired a lawyer."
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Eh, my day-to-day lawyer and the firm I'd hire if a big company
| sued me and my company are different. If I were in Matt's
| position I'd have probably taken everything to a single firm
| that could handle all conceivable work, but it's not uncommon
| to do otherwise.
|
| The first lawyer he refers to may be actually Automattic
| corporate counsel, too, and you'd definitely want an outside
| firm on this suit.
|
| Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Though any lawyer should have told him to shut up.
|
| Yeah, it's not exactly a contentious legal opinion, "Don't go
| on a massive, selective, foot-in-mouth comment spree that
| just raises more questions and problems than it answers on
| social media after being served with a suit."
| throwgfgfd25 wrote:
| Neal Katyal though. Someone you hire if you expect to go the
| distance.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| What percentage of WPEngine does Automattic own? Why do not they
| donate to Wordpress Foundation out of that?
| throwgfgfd25 wrote:
| Where is it documented Automattic (or Mr Mullenweg) owns any of
| WP Engine?
|
| (ETA: Not saying it's impossible he or they have an interest --
| I've just never seen this suggested. WP Engine is in many ways
| a competitor to wordpress.com, so it would be unusual, I think.
| And he/they have long not been a fan of WP Engine.)
| aimazon wrote:
| Automattic were an early investor in WPEngine, but they
| exited the investment around 2018.
| throwgfgfd25 wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| 2018 would tie in with about when I first got the
| impression he was not a fan of WP Engine. I'm sure there
| was fuss once before (about them not being on the
| "recommended hosting" page?)
| ValentineC wrote:
| Automattic made an investment in WP Engine in 2011:
|
| https://wptavern.com/automattic-makes-second-investment-
| wpen...
| tredre3 wrote:
| Automattic invested in WP Engine ~13 years ago. I don't know
| if they still own the shares though.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/15/silverton-automattic-
| put-1...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| They already took it down?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Page not found.
|
| Edit: page has returned.
| notatoad wrote:
| works for me...
|
| > Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against
| Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start
| to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine's allegations--which
| are gross mischaracterizations of reality--and reserve all of
| our rights. Automattic is confident in our legal position, and
| will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as
| pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained
| Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United
| States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr.
| Katyal stated, "I stayed up last night reading WP Engine's
| Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole
| thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court's
| consideration of their lawsuit."
|
| > Our focus is and has always been protecting >the integrity of
| WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our
| earliest days, our highest priority has always been our
| customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
| woah wrote:
| # A Statement from Automattic
|
| Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic
| and Matt Mullenweg. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish.
| We vehemently deny WP Engine's allegations--which are gross
| mischaracterizations of reality--and reserve all of our rights.
| Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will
| vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue
| all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal
| Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and
| his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us. Mr. Katyal stated,
| "I stayed up last night reading WP Engine's Complaint, trying to
| find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and
| we look forward to the federal court's consideration of their
| lawsuit."
|
| Our focus is and has always been protecting the integrity of
| WordPress and our mission to democratize publishing. From our
| earliest days, our highest priority has always been our
| customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same.
| x0x0 wrote:
| You forgot this bit, or perhaps it was edited in:
|
| > Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and
| won every case.
|
| My perception: the personal grievance comes through loud and
| clear. Hopefully cases are decided more on their merits and
| less on the identities of the attorneys prosecuting them.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| > "WP Engine can hardly say the same"
|
| So much of Automattic's corpospeak drips with spite. Makes me
| understand why other companies are so "bland" -- to protect
| themselves
| aimazon wrote:
| That's because it's not corpospeak, it's Mattospeak.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Automattic apparently has 1800 employees (LOL). Surprised
| they don't have a board, HR, comms, and other teams?
|
| Also I realized "Matt" is front and center in Automattic so
| that says a lot
| everfrustrated wrote:
| I just twigged the name is AutoMATTic
| rglover wrote:
| This is getting embarrassing. I was a big fan of Matt's before
| this whole charade started but he's basically flushing 20 years
| of goodwill down the drain for not a whole lot in return. As best
| as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute over the "WP"
| in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to implement a
| retroactive licensing agreement)?
| klelatti wrote:
| As I understand it the claimed trademark infringement is WPE
| saying they 'provide WordPress hosting'. If they are successful
| can anyone built an opens source hosting business?
| nickff wrote:
| I am not sure which way this will go, but WPE's website was
| using the word "WordPress" in every possible way before they
| 'cleaned it up' a few days ago. I am not sure whether it was
| trademark infringement, but they did seem to be leaning
| heavily on the trademarked term. I compared WPE's website to
| Dreamhost's (as I am familiar with the latter as a provider
| of hosting for WordPress-based websites), and the latter used
| the term far more sparingly.
| klelatti wrote:
| Fair enough - I can see there are limits but the material
| in Automattic's lawsuit didn't seem that problematic. Not
| sure how the law can distinguish between ok and too much
| use of 'WordPress'.
| joshbetz wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but why would they remove uses of
| WordPress from their website right before suing Automattic
| if their position is that they weren't violating the
| trademark?
| klelatti wrote:
| That's easy - limiting potential liability if they lose.
| It's not an admission of guilt though.
| wmf wrote:
| It would give a lot of power to trademark policies.
|
| Mozilla has one of the stricter trademark policies but it's
| for a good reason and the community mostly trusts them.
| WordPress not so much.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| If WordPress won on the trademark infringement issue, it
| would be a fundamental rewriting of trademark law as it
| exists in the U.S. today.
|
| Companies _even competitors_ are allowed to use trademarks
| when they are making factual statements, like "we provide
| Wordpress hosting" as long as they make it clear that they
| are not the trademark holder (i.e., confusing customers).
| Even before they revamped their website, WP Engine was very
| clear about being a _third party_ provider for hosting
| WordPress blogs. They weren 't claiming to be the original
| WordPress, or the original WordPress hosting provider, or
| anything similar.
| klelatti wrote:
| In that case I have no idea why Automattic would attempt to
| try to get WPE to license the trademark.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Based on Matt's voluminous posts yesterday, the concept
| of the law isn't really relevant to how he run's
| WordPress.org or Autommatic.
|
| He admitted to violating labor laws and non-profit tax
| laws, and perpetuated several ongoing torts. He had a
| very productive day; it explains why he had to hire one
| of the most sadistic corporate lawyers in America.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Perhaps if they were called WPHosting, but WPEngine sounds
| very like core wordpress.
| m348e912 wrote:
| >As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute
| over the "WP" in WPEngine
|
| I'm only slightly following the dispute between Automattic and
| WPEngine but it might have more to do with WPEngine rewriting
| the payment identifier on Automattic's open source Woo Commerce
| ecommerce plugin.
|
| WPEngine's payment identifier rewrite results in WPEngine
| getting a cut of ecommerce payments processed through their
| hosted sites and not Automattic.
|
| I don't know the details though and probably didn't even
| explain it right. Matt talked about it recently in a Youtube
| interview.
| kevinlangleyjr wrote:
| If you read through the lawsuit, that's not even the case.
| m348e912 wrote:
| I understand what's in the lawsuit, I am just speculating
| on what might have been the last straw that led to the
| lawsuit.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > As best as I can tell this is all over a trademark dispute
| over the "WP" in WPEngine (and a hand-forcing by Automattic to
| implement a retroactive licensing agreement)?
|
| Not just a retroactive agreement, a retroactive rewriting of
| trademark usage. Up until a few days _into_ this dispute, the
| appropriate text on WordPress 's site explicitly _permitted_
| people to use "WP" as they saw fit (as much as they can, as I
| don't believe they have a trademark on WP, just WordPress).
| Matt hastily edited things to imply WPEngine was in violation.
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| Hopefully his first advice was to tell Matt to cease the
| hotheaded tweets, livestream interviews, and hn comments.
| n3storm wrote:
| After ClassicPress fork here comes: DramaPress
| layer8 wrote:
| Dramattic
| next_xibalba wrote:
| When this story first emerged, I was somewhat sympathetic to
| Matt/Automattic. But geeze, he is just looking worse and worse.
| Between this tantrum and threatening a former employee over a
| very innocuous statement [1], his credibility is pretty low in my
| opinion.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@kelliepeterson/nice-guy-matt-
| mullenweg-c...
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Kellie's article is a well-written and reasonable response to
| mean-spirited bullying. It makes me wonder why a lot of people
| think it's good to have Silicon Valley _companies_ run by
| trolls. Is that really the way to build successful businesses?
|
| Edit: added missing word "companies"
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Far out, this whole thing is links to links to links, is there
| somewhere I can read a summary of this whole stupid drama?
| ValentineC wrote:
| Someone shared this LWN article somewhere among all the
| discussions, and it seems neutral enough:
|
| https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991906/d7340f3b866d855b/
| klelatti wrote:
| Like many here I suspect I care less about who wins the
| litigation than about the third parties - businesses, individuals
| and at least one major charity - who will have been affected by
| Matt's and Automattic's actions.
|
| Where is the blog post about the affect this has had on them?
| trog wrote:
| Regardless of which side you're on, so far the one thing that
| seems clear here is that the lawyers are going to be the real
| winners here.
|
| When that is happening between two companies I generally don't
| care about it that much, but I hope open source doesn't turn out
| to be collateral damage here.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Exactly my thinking as well. All this bickering managed to do
| is convince me to setup my blog on Ghost instead of anything
| WP-related.
|
| Both parties seemingly suck, and I wish them both the worst. In
| the meantime, this is a great excuse to promote WP-alternatives
| and improve upon them just in case this whole thing goes
| completely pear-shaped.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Both parties seemingly suck
|
| What exactly sucks about WPEngine, specifically?
| elAhmo wrote:
| This feels like a classic "you either die a hero or live long
| enough to see yourself become the villain". It appears the more
| Matt talks, the more he tarnishes the reputation Wordpress has.
| swores wrote:
| > _" Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times,
| and won every case."_
|
| I don't think I have ever before seen, in an official public
| statement, a "The lawyer we just hired always beats the lawyer
| they just hired!" boast, and it seems ridiculous - it's almost
| even hinting in the direction that they think the case should be
| decided on quality of lawyer rather than that their case should
| win on merit.
| nickff wrote:
| Selecting a lawyer with a proven record, and expressing
| confidence in them are not "hinting in the direction that they
| think the case should be decided on quality of lawyer". They're
| smart strategies, whether you decide to take the case to court,
| or seek a settlement (on either side).
| swores wrote:
| I agree that it is of course smart to choose a lawyer you
| think can win, it's the public statement about the lawyer's
| track record that seems crazy to me, not the hiring decision.
| nickff wrote:
| Expressing confidence publicly just seems like a 'stronger'
| way of expressing it (as compared to doing so privately).
| Perhaps Automattic is trying to get WP Engine stakeholders
| to press for a settlement?
|
| What about this "seems crazy"?
| swores wrote:
| It makes no difference in their battle against WP Engine,
| who would very quickly discover which lawyers they're
| going up against with or without this blog post.
|
| That line in the blog post is aimed at public perception,
| not WP Engine's perception, and from a PR point of view
| there's not really any benefit to it only downside - I
| guess their thinking is that some members of public might
| think "the winning lawyer wouldn't join the losing team
| so Automattic must be in the right here", but it actually
| makes them look like their legal defence is weak enough
| that they need to resort to trying to win through legal
| skills rather than business facts.
|
| When I call it "crazy" I'm talking from the point of view
| of someone who has drafted a couple of announcements
| quite similar to this one, and many others that weren't
| related to defending legal cases but were still walking
| tricking lines in PR/comms, and I just can't imagine a
| line like that being suggested by anyone I've worked with
| and can't imagine letting it slip into a release I was
| involved in.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| A sentiment that a lawyer is so good they will overcome
| this challenge rather than conveying that the lawyer will
| prove the questions of law and fact resolve it in their
| favor... it just... well... seems like the kind of shit
| that's for a TV show where it's not about contesting
| facts and law.
| nickff wrote:
| Lawyering is not just about knowing the law and proving
| facts, for an example of this, I recommend the book about
| Theranos: "Bad Blood".
| finnthehuman wrote:
| Yeah, ofc, the lawyer skill gradient exists and causes
| slam-dunk cases to be decided in the "wrong" [0]
| direction. It's just odd to say you will win because the
| lawyer is that good, makes it sound like you might be
| wrong but are going to win simply because you have better
| council.
|
| [0] There's gotta be a fancy latin-sounding lawyer word
| for this, right?
| sourraspberry wrote:
| _> Neal has taken on sloppy Quinn Emanuel many times, many many
| times, and each case he has won BIGLY. WP ENGINE IS THE ENEMENY
| OF THE PEOPLE!_
| delfinom wrote:
| I mean Quinn Emanuel is sloppy
|
| https://venturebeat.com/business/apple-nokia-win-2m-after-
| sa...
|
| Lol
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _From our earliest days, our highest priority has always been our
| customers. WP Engine can hardly say the same._
|
| Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back the
| WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without telling
| anybody. For the good of the customers.
|
| That's why they forced the new boondoggle editing UI that
| everyone hates. For the good of the customers.
|
| That's why the WordPress code _is still_ spaghetti more than 15
| years after it was originally launched. For the good of the
| customers.
|
| Matt also seems very proud of his new, shady lawyer, who failed
| to disclose that he had cases before the Supreme Court when he
| endorsed Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for open spots. Gorsuch and
| Kavanaugh have since reciprocated by ruling for this guy's
| clients every time, in several cases with decisions that
| confounded even conservative legal experts. So, it would seem
| Matt found a dirty lawyer to represent his dirty case. (EDIT:
| Katyal is the lawyer who suggested corporations should be immune
| from anti-trafficking laws _because it would be bad for business_
| and got his endorsee pals to bless corporate wage theft. He 's
| the kind of lawyer companies turn to when they want to get away
| with something truly evil.)
|
| _We vehemently deny WP Engine's allegations--which are gross
| mischaracterizations of reality_
|
| Based on Matt's gross misrepresentations of reality on
| yesterday's thread, the only party to this case making gross
| mischaracterizations of reality is Matt.
|
| If WordPress were truly an independent, community-led
| organization like Matt claims, he would have been forced out by
| now for the harm he's inflicted upon it.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| > That's why the WordPress code is still spaghetti more than 15
| years after it was originally launched. For the good of the
| customers.
|
| Thats actually true. Backward compatibility was and still is
| the #1 thing in WP, and its why it won over the web: No small
| business or individual customer cares about 'better code' in
| the backend if those 'improvements' break their websites. This
| was what a lot of wordpress competitors did in the past and
| they suffered for it.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers.
| Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that can't
| be improved until Matt decides to make the breaking change
| that forcibly breaks hundreds of plugins, etc., random bugs
| that nobody understands, poor performance requiring expensive
| and extensive modifications to achieve basic levels of
| responsiveness that makes even Java look like a speedster.
|
| Backwards compatibility is just the excuse Matt has been
| using from the beginning to justify how abysmally bad the
| code is.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| > No, the spaghetti code has always been bad for customers
|
| Never ever seen one single non-technical website owner or
| user complain about 'spaghetti code'. As for 'code quality
| affecting other things', that's our (programmers')
| exaggeration:
|
| > Security exploits, hacked-together functionality that
| can't be improved
|
| NASA, White House, CNN, Reuters, Techcrunch and a thousand
| other gigantic organizations use Wordpress and they arent
| getting hacked.
|
| Neither any of the small to medium businesses that use wp
| for their own websites, marketing sites or ecommerce sites
| - as long as they keep their site and plugins updated.
|
| > poor performance requiring expensive and extensive
| modifications to achieve basic levels of responsiveness
|
| I dont know where you are pulling that out from. Default wp
| can do 1.5 seconds load time from start to finish and get
| 99, 100, 99 scores in google page speed. Even with a good
| theme, its still as fast.
|
| > Backwards compatibility is just the excuse
|
| Its not the excuse. Its the #1 concern of small and medium
| businesses and individuals, and whenever it was violated WP
| or any plugin, droves of them left the WP ecosystem or
| stopped using such plugins.
|
| Really, what we concern ourselves as programmers and what
| the overwhelming majority of users on the internet concern
| themselves with, have a huge chasm in between them.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Yes, that's why WordPress silently and secretly licensed back
| the WordPress trademarks to Matt's for-profit company without
| telling anybody. For the good of the customers.
|
| On the very same day Matt released a press release patting
| himself on the back for doing so, and how deeply devoted to the
| community he was. Indeed the press release specifically talked
| about how this ensured WordPress would never be unduly
| influenced by for-profit companies!
| ValentineC wrote:
| The various articles also omitted that the trademark licence
| is perpetual _and_ irrevocable.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| The popcorn value on this saga is awesome!
|
| As far as I can figure, from watching Matt's recent interviews
| and my own conjecture...
|
| Matt's seen his open source creation go, over the course of 20
| years, from a hobbyist product to now one with a multitude of
| companies creating billions of revenue from it.
|
| But as it's grown certain companies are now huge and flush with
| VC cash. Which does change the equation. In the early days it
| might be reasonable to turn a blind eye to trademark infringement
| when it helps all boats rise, but now things are very imbalanced.
|
| IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS does
| with many open-source solutions. Customers want products not
| source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-added
| products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this revenue is
| going back to the developers and fostering the development
| ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource projects like
| Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers hired from 8% of
| revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much better off those
| projects could have been.
|
| As Wordpress itself is open-source Matt doesn't have any levers
| except the name Wordpress. As anybody in open-source should know
| - the code might well be open for forking but the name is very
| protected. Just because the trademark hasn't been entirely well
| enforced doesn't mean the protection is lost - the right always
| belongs to the trademark holder to use and enforce how they
| please as unilaterally as they wish. Trademarks can lose their
| protection if they start referring to generics but that's not the
| case here. Wordpress doesn't mean generic CMS - it's always
| referring to a Wordpress source code hosted by various companies.
|
| Matt's clearly acting emotionally and not terribly logically -
| that's clear for everyone to see. But I do think its with the
| long term intention of making a more sustainable community.
|
| Ultimately WPEngine can just rename their company and the only
| lever Matt has over them goes away.
|
| Or they can embrace the name and pay a fair licensing cost - a
| rate significantly lower than if they were licensing some other
| commercial CRM software.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _IMHO WPEngine is rent-extracting in the same way that AWS
| does with many open-source solutions. Customers want products
| not source-code and are prepared to pay for packaged value-
| added products compatible with Wordpress. But none of this
| revenue is going back to the developers and fostering the
| development ecosystem in any meaningful way. If opensource
| projects like Redis & Elasticsearch could have had developers
| hired from 8% of revenues from those AWS sales imagine how much
| better off those projects could have been._
|
| WP Engine also acquired, and continues to maintain, projects
| like Advanced Custom Fields [1] and Local [2].
|
| Local used to have pro features, which became free for everyone
| after the acquisition [3].
|
| [1] https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/blog/reflecting-on-
| two-...
|
| [2] https://wpengine.com/blog/better-together-wp-engine-and-
| flyw...
|
| [3] https://localwp.com/pro-for-everyone/
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