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WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

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Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#201

Post by mthoms »

slouch wrote: post #175
chuckadams wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the extortion is the most serious allegation, but WPE isn't providing a lot of background in terms of what and how much Mullenweg was demanding, only texts that came well after the demand was made. My guess is if there's a really damning email, WPE's lawyers served them a legal hold privately rather than make it public. Alexa, order ten cases of popcorn...

Matt admitted on reddit that he asked for 8% of annual revenue or ~40 million. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/... He posted this after receiving the C&D.

Notably, Matt demanded that would need to be paid to Automattic instead of the WordPress Foundation. (that's according to WPEngine).

Automattic is Matt's private, for-profit company and a direct competitor to WPE.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#202

Post by tptacek »

Kye wrote: post #155
mintplant wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in this thread seem to be focused on the defamation angle, but is the more important allegation not the alleged demand for large amounts of money to not destroy WP Engine's business? Matt sounds like a wannabe mob boss in the screencapped texts, sending photos of the crowd before his keynote and talking about how he could still "very easily" make it just a Q&A session if WP Engine agrees to pay up.

Agreed. I'm confused by a lot of the discourse in this thread. The extortion seems like the important thing. I would think (paraphrasing) "I'm going to destroy your business if you don't pay me" is extortion regardless of the merits of the claims used in carrying out the threat.

Extortion does not look like an easy case to make. Pull up some of the state statutes: they all seem to have intent and malice requirements, and/or, like California, require the threat to be of an unlawful injury. Threatening to ruthlessly exploit capabilities you lawfully have, like the bully pulpit of leading the WordPress project or the strictness with which you license your trademark, is unlikely to meet that standard.

(But see below for the 'DannyBee comment on how UCL unfair competition might work even if you can't make a case under the extortion statute itself).

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#203

Post by gibrown »

chuckadams wrote: post #186
slouch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt admitted on reddit that he asked for 8% of annual revenue or ~40 million. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/... He posted this after receiving the C&D.

Cool, thanks for the link. I wonder how much of Automattic's board is made up of Matt's personal friends. He'd best hope it's a majority.

No need to wonder: https://automattic.com/board/

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#204

Post by tptacek »

mthoms wrote: post #201
slouch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt admitted on reddit that he asked for 8% of annual revenue or ~40 million. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/... He posted this after receiving the C&D.

Notably, Matt demanded that would need to be paid to Automattic instead of the WordPress Foundation. (that's according to WPEngine). Automattic is Matt's private, for-profit company and a direct competitor to WPE.

There are things in that WPE C&D that make me question how candid they're being; for instance, the trademark dispute seems an awful lot more complicated than the letters "W" and "P".

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#205

Post by mrwyz »

echoangle wrote: post #116
mrwyz wrote: post #58

I'm hopeful Automattic will win this one; WP Engine repackages WordPress and delivers it as a service. Fine. Software license allows for that. That does not give them the right to describe their service as "[the] Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond". They clearly say so in their policy: https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

You can't prevent someone from using your Trademark as a description with your trademark policy. Everyone can use your Trademark to identify the thing, they don't need your permission. I could call myself the best Linux admin ever and the Linux Mark Institute can do nothing.

That's not how U.S. trademark law works.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#206

Post by duskwuff »

chuckadams wrote: post #186
slouch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matt admitted on reddit that he asked for 8% of annual revenue or ~40 million. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fnz0h6/comment/... He posted this after receiving the C&D.

Cool, thanks for the link. I wonder how much of Automattic's board is made up of Matt's personal friends. He'd best hope it's a majority.

Out of five board members, one is Matt, one was the CEO of Automattic before Matt took over the role, and a third was an early investor. The other two are harder to pin down.

https://automattic.com/board/

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#207

Post by camgunz »

chrisandchris wrote: post #134
camgunz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this completely fine? If you and I both make aspirin, but we both put a little something extra in it (me vanilla, you salt) and I put banners on my web page saying "bastawhiz's salty aspirin puts the ass in aspirin", doesn't this just seem like typical rivalry? My point here is that defamation is defamation no matter the scale. I think scale is relevant re: damages, but not as to whether or not rivalry escalate…

> Automattic put a banner in every WordPress dashboard on the subject, including WordPress instances hosted by WPE > I put banners on my web There's a large difference between putting up a banner on _your_ site and abusing your position to put a banner on _every_ site you can.

One person's "abuse" is another person's "I have this platform and can use it however I like." For another example, whenever cable companies (dish, etc.) have licensing disagreements with content creators, they put up a bunch of ads that are like, "ESPN's unfair negotiations mean you may lose access to this channel, call this number to complain". That's never been found to be defamatory--it occurs to this day.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#208

Post by mthoms »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #161
chrisandchris wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but does not apply to this situation. Automattic is not the owner of WordPress, the WordPress Foundation is. Even though many employees of Automattic work (maybe full-time) on WordPress [1]. So I sell your aspirin in my shop, and a friend of yours helped you package your aspirins and while doing that put some stickers onto your aspirin. [1] https://www.df.eu/blog/wer-steckt-hinter-wordpress-ueber-die...…

Does WPF take issue with this operational decision by Automattic? If so, they have the avenues to deal with it, and they're the party who can claim to be aggrieved, if it violates some duty Automattic has to WPF. I seems more like this, from my understanding: You sell a brand of aspirin in your shop. The brand has outsourced most of the production and decision-making to another company. That company puts messages on…

Here's the thing. Guess who is the head of the WordPress Foundation?

Matt Mullenweg. CEO of Automattic.

Now guess who The WordPress Foundation granted sole rights to sub-license their trademarks? You guessed it. Automattic.

Yeah, it gets worse the more you look at it.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#209

Post by tptacek »

DannyBee wrote: post #188
tptacek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Abuse of position" is not generally an actionable claim.

Unfair competition is, particularly in California, which interprets it's UCL very broadly. Let's set aside all other claims (there are others), and take a look at "Unlawful, Unfair, and Fraudulent Business Acts" under that. We'll also throw out unlawful business acts (I don't see anything unlawful so far). Unfair: "An “unfair” business act or practice, as defined by the UCL, is typically committed by either a company…

I'm just happy to have successfully baited you into commenting. You're obviously more authoritative than I am on this.

Re: WP Engine sent “cease and desist” letter to Automattic

#210

Post by camgunz »

justinclift wrote: post #141
camgunz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this completely fine? If you and I both make aspirin, but we both put a little something extra in it (me vanilla, you salt) and I put banners on my web page saying "bastawhiz's salty aspirin puts the ass in aspirin", doesn't this just seem like typical rivalry? My point here is that defamation is defamation no matter the scale. I think scale is relevant re: damages, but not as to whether or not rivalry escalate…

Nah. Putting disparaging claims directly on the dashboard of my customers seems pretty abusive, and if it happened to me I'd be looking at legal options too.

What about regular, non-disparaging claims? Isn't it a fact that WP Engine turns off the backup stuff? Truth's a defense to libel.

This seems to me plainly like regular old competition. Can you point to something that's clearly defamatory?

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