[mattbeck]

For many years, the official guidance on the trademark has explicitly been that WP was not the trademark and people should use that instead of WordPress. Tons and tons of people use WP in their businesses, domains, product names, etc.

[teddyh]

And, as it turns out, consumer confusion happened anyway.

[Aurornis]

Who are these confused consumers? The people who don’t know much anything about Wordpress except that they want it will end up at Wordpress.com. You have to go out of your way to find alternative hosting providers like WP Engine.

The “confused consumers” thing feels like a manufactured justification for whatever this spat is.

[kijin]

But WPEngine is toeing the line especially precariously.

The company is called WPEngine, sure, but their tagline says "Most trusted WordPress platform". Their plans are named "Essential WordPress", "Core WordPress", etc. Are those products they're selling, or just descriptions? There's enough gray area there to attract a lawyer's attention, which Mullenweg is clearly using to his advantage.

[graeme]

The proper response would be a suit to enforce a trademark, not an explosion of articles, interviews, shutdown of network access and demands for money paid to a private company in order to prevent the explosion.

[cj]

> The proper response would be a suit to enforce a trademark

Which I believe was their legal response. The problem is it should have stopped there.

I'm sure Matt's lawyers aren't very happy with him at the moment. Legally, it's usually not advantageous to retaliate so strongly and publicly. It greatly muddies the legal waters.

[flutas]

> Which I believe was their legal response

Really? I see extortion in those texts, not a legal lawsuit to enforce a trademark.

I mean, is this a legal and well crafted lawsuit? Or just extortion.

> Just called. Should I run these slides or not?

> Is next week a negotiation on the % or it happening at all? I am not going to be able to walk it back

> I know that this is the nuclear option, it sets us down a specific path

[Aurornis]

Honestly, what do you expect these people to call their services?

“Essential Blog Hosting Service using a Commonly Used Open Source Software That We Cannot Name”?

[graeme]

Yeah nominative use explicitly covers this.

>"In other words, individuals are not compelled by trademark law to use "absurd turns of phrase" simply to avoid trademark liability."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

[FireBeyond]

"Welcome to the Something Like A Hyper Plate for 2024".