[rgbrenner]

this dispute is with wordpress though. “wordpress” is not a generic term. if i called my company “MSengine”, and described it as “the most trusted microsoft platform” (a phrase i copied straight from wpengine.com)… i would get a cease and desist almost immediately.

even in the open source community, there are dozens (probably more) linux distros that have been told by ubuntu to rename their projects from “ubuntu x” to something else, for example. there are no trademark grants contained in the gpl or any of the popular open source licenses.

the only mystery is why they’ve waited so long to enforce their trademark.. but matt says they’ve been working on a deal “for a while”.. and i guess we’ll have to wait until the court case to see what that means.

[kadoban]

The WordPress trademark guides say explicitly that "WP" is allowed to be used by others. Several other parts of the wording the WP Engine uses are also explicitly allowed. So your whole first two paragraphs are mistaken.

[WillPostForFood]

It also explicitly says you can't use "Wordpress" in your product names, and WP Engine is doing that. I thought it might be common, but the other big providers do not use WordPress in their product names.

Essential Wordpress

Core Wordpress

Enterprise Wordpress

https://wpengine.com/plans/

[brianfryer]

> you can't use "Wordpress" in your product names, and WP Engine is doing that

WP Engine is explicitly not doing that.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYPsyoSbwAACO7X?format=jpg&name=...

[WillPostForFood]

If you are selling "Core Wordpress" WP Engine is explicitly naming a product using "Wordpress". If it was "Core WP" that would be fine.

[lupoair]

They just changed the naming after this dispute started.

[zo1]

And yet, here is Godaddy doing the same thing:

https://www.godaddy.com/en-ph/hosting/wordpress-hosting

Or a recent hosting provider I interacted with in a 3rd world country:

https://client.absolutehosting.co.za/store/wordpress-hosting

Come now, this seems to be a huge abuse of "trademark" of a term. Wordpress may be open source, but having the actual name of the "Opensource" thing be trademarked by a non-profit (that's also who-knows-how-much controlled by a for-profit entity) seems like such a dick move. I'm gonna start adding it to my list... OpenAI, Mozilla Foundation, Wordpress.

Edit. Side note:

I looked up the Linux trademark usage guidelines. Looks like half the internet is infringing on this one too if you squint. So maybe this all boils down to a case of "Don't be a jerk" that some entities adhere to when it comes to protecting their trademark, whilst others like Automattic use it to bully competitors.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/trademark-usage

[WillPostForFood]

Or it's WP Engine being a jerk, and this is just a way to put some pressure on them.

Look at it this way - WordPress is the #1 platform for websites. It is a free, Open-source, and huge asset to the community. Are you going to shit on the guys who made it and gave it away because you have some sympathy for some overpriced, hosting company?

If the Wordpress team disappeared, it would be a tragedy. If WP Engine disappeared it would be nothing.

[Marsymars]

> Wordpress may be open source, but having the actual name of the "Opensource" thing be trademarked by a non-profit (that's also who-knows-how-much controlled by a for-profit entity) seems like such a dick move.

I get the "ick" factor here, but there doesn't really seem to be a better alternative. If "OpenSourceWare" isn't trademarked by non-profit "OpenSourceSoft", the options are either a) no trademark, and it's a free-for-all where the biggest marketing budget and SEO teams get the biggest return on mindshare and search results or b) Oracle gets the trademark and nobody else is allowed to use it.

[eurleif]

The page you linked applies to trademarks owned by the Linux Foundation. The Linux trademark is actually owned by Linus Torvalds, not by the Linux Foundation; and different rules apply to it, as your link notes.

>For information regarding the Linux trademark, owned by Linus Torvalds, please see the Linux Mark Institute (administered by The Linux Foundation). Your use of the Linux trademark must be in accordance with the Linux Mark Institute’s policy.

Which links to this page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark

[AlchemistCamp]

Wow, you're right. That page is a undeniably an infringement.

[immibis]

Probably (the trademark equivalent of) fair use, because WordPress is what they are selling. If I have a basket of windows disks to sell, I can write Microsoft Windows on my price list because the thing I'm selling is called that.

[orra]

This analogy came up recently when discussing Elasticsearch. It's flawed.

Free and open source software does not, and has never, required giving up trademark rights. I think the GPLv3 is even explicit about this.

In the Windows case it's fair use of the trademark because you're reselling something you previously bought. That's not applicable here.

WordPress is open source software, but a hosting service has a variety of characteristics unrelated to the nominal software. Besides, WP Engine are disabling key features of the product: of course that's misleading.

[immibis]

The hosting company sells WordPress hosting services. The rest of the arguments are nonsense, such as the one about revisions being disabled.

[ensignavenger]

Looks like those are just headings, not product names.

[pests]

Wut? In what are are those not product names? Any reasonable person would assume so.

[incredimike]

Looks like product names to me. It’s certainly confusing at least, which is an issue either way.

[rgbrenner]

if we’re going by the trademark policy, it also says you can’t use the wordpress name in the name of your project or service.

and arguing that “wp” doesn’t mean “wordpress” and therefore is allowed, is exactly the same as me selling “msengine” for microsoft products, and telling everyone “ms” doesn’t mean microsoft. we all know what it stands for for, and if you weren’t sure, you can jut scan the page and see it’s clearly associated with wordpress. if that’s the basis of the legal defense wpengine wants to make in court, they are truly f’d.

[lolinder]

Up until this dispute the WordPress trademark policy contained this:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

Now it's been updated to say this:

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

It's pretty clear that WP Engine has been in compliance with the old trademark policy and that the new one is acknowledging that they don't have legal standing to demand anything about the WP abbreviation (not least because they waited so long to complain about the usage) so they're instead inserting a petulant and childish slight.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240101165105/https://wordpressf...

[ok_dad]

> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks

Straight from the Wordpress trademark page that was just recently changed to talk shit about a competitor:

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

[rgbrenner]

microsoft doesn’t have a trademark on “ms” either. like i said, if wpengine is hoping to go into court and explain that wp is not related to wordpress, while selling wordpress services… i dont think its going to go well for them.

this is going to be just as flimsy of a defense as “mikerowesoft”

[kadoban]

> if wpengine is hoping to go into court and explain that wp is not related to wordpress, while selling wordpress services… i dont think its going to go well for them.

Of course not. They will (if it goes that far) point out that their use of WP is explicitly in line with the trademark holder's public guidance on that exact point.

You can't tell everybody that it's fine to use wording like that and then sue them when they do it.

[tapoxi]

yeah but Wordpress.org explicitly said "using WP is okay". if they turn around and say "no it's not" that's promissory estoppel

[chuckadams]

There's also "estoppel by laches", which boils down to "you waited too long". Guarantee that's going to be part of WPE's defense too. Then there's the fact that a8c actually invested in WPE while this supposed infringement was taking place.

I am already running out of popcorn.

[patmcc]

Trademarks are largely (but not exclusively) about preventing consumer confusion. I can offer a course called "Learn how to use Excel like a pro" and not get sued by MS, as long as I'm not making it seem like I'm Microsoft.

Just like DigitalOcean can say "We will rent you an Ubuntu server". We can argue about whether calling something "Wordpress Hosting" or "Hosting a Wordpress site" is different, but I think WP Engine is being perfectly reasonable. "Wordpress Hosting" is as generic as Kleenex and Xerox at this point.

[neom]

I've been thinking about this all week since this WP stuff kicked off. You know what's funny, as far as I know I was the first senior person to have a conversation with Ubuntu about that from the DO side, and as far as I recall it (granted it was a long time ago) it was basically them: "Uhm, you can't do that"- me: "maybe, not sure, but probably better to be friends tho yah?" them: "yah" me: "k" - dunno how it is today, but at least till I left, that was how it remained, always earned a shit load of respect in my book, not sure how it'd have gone for us if they decided to really get nasty, but either way, super grateful they didn't, good job Ubuntu people!!!!

[mdasen]

Earlier this month, WordPress explicitly said that their trademark didn't cover "WP"

https://web.archive.org/web/20240901224354/https://wordpress...

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

They changed the wording as of this dispute with WP Engine:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

Trademarks need to be defended to be valid. If I started a website "YC Hacker News", Y Combinator would need to defend their trademark (if they think they have one over "YC Hacker News") or the fact that I'm using "YC Hacker News" means they don't have a trademark over that. WP Engine has been around for over a decade. Automattic and the WordPress foundation didn't have an issue with it for such a long time. If you think someone is infringing on your trademark, you can't just let them use it and come back a decade later and change your mind.

In this case, WordPress has even less argument. If Y Combinator said "you can use 'YC' and 'Hacker News' in any way you see fit," they couldn't later come back and say "nooooo, YC sounds like Y Combinator and people get confused!" The WordPress Foundation explicitly allowed everyone to use "WP" in any way they saw fit and disclaimed all trademark over "WP".

Yes, lots of companies/foundations wouldn't have allowed the generic use of "WP" for anyone to use. In this case, they explicitly allowed it and also didn't have a problem with WP Engine's use for well over a decade.

They waited so long to "enforce their trademark" because they don't have a trademark on "WP". They explicitly said so. Now they're trying to create a trademark on a term that's already been in generic use for a while - and explicitly blessed by the WordPress Foundation.

I certainly understand Automattic not liking the fact that they're doing (and paying for) the development work on WordPress while many WordPress users pay WP Engine instead of Automattic/WordPress.com. However, the ship has sailed on claiming that people aren't allowed to use "WP". From where I'm sitting, this feels similar to Elastic, Mongo and other open-source companies disliking it when third parties make money off their open-source code. Of course, WordPress (and Automattic's WordPress.com) wouldn't be the success it is without its open-source nature (just ask Movable Type).

[beerandt]

The whole standard for trademark law is whether it causes confusion in commerce.

Sounds like they might have a not-great ip lawyer.

Your don't have to claim WP to claim it's being marketed as an abbreviation for your trademark, within your market.

I'm not saying it's a winning argument, but better than whatever the legal framing/ posturing of 'WP isn't our TM' is. Bad PR, if not bad legal take.

[patmcc]

Except Wordpress even explicitly suggests using wp in the domain: https://wordpress.org/about/domains/

>>>we ask if you’re going to start a site about WordPress or related to it that you not use “WordPress” in the domain name. Try using “wp” instead, or another variation...

[beerandt]

Yea- same point though. Bad IP advice / strategy.

Don't condone confusing ip policy if you don't want to end up with confusing product names, especially in a resurgence of 'the domain name is the product' of unlimited tlds.

[patmcc]

Definitely bad IP advice, but I think it helps WP Engine to be able to say "look even all the various 'official' Wordpress sites said our name was fine for years".