[graeme]

For there to be a violation there has to be a reasonable prospect of consumer confusion by the consumers in the target market. The page is labelled "Choose your WordPress Hosting plan"

Someone who is in the market for Wordpress hosting is almost certainly aware they have Wordpress and that they need hosting for it. Wordpress is a nominative use to refer to the entity, and Core is an adjective which in context means central.

Do you actually think there are meaningful numbers of people who have believed that WPEngine is actually wordpress itself? That would be the standard. Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular basis.

[trvr]

"Do you actually think there are meaningful numbers of people who have believed that WPEngine is actually wordpress itself?"

Yes.

"Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular basis."

Wordpress.com has a license to use the Wordpress trademark. I don't believe we should be comparing Wordpress.com to WP Engine here.

[graeme]

Fair enough on wordpress.com. It still doesn't strike me as plausible that any reasonable person in a purchasing decision thinks WPengine is wordpress itself. I certainly haven't seen any such confusion online.

[samatman]

I just found out today that WPEngine is not the same legal entity as WordPress.

So yeah, from my perspective there's a real case for confusion of marks here.

I have no opinion about the drama one way or the other, just providing a datum.