WordPress founder sued for alleged libel and tried extortion

The WP Engine webhosting service is suing WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and his firm Automattic. This follows a public feud over the WordPress trademark. The federal lawsuit accuses Mullenweg of “abuse of energy, extortion and greed.”

That is the most recent volley in an ongoing battle between WordPress and WP Engine, nevertheless it requires a bit of background. WordPress is the backend that powers a big chunk of the web, round 40 p.c of internet sites. Customers can construct an internet site from the bottom up utilizing WordPress or go for a better plug-and-play answer provided by third-party suppliers like WP Engine.

Mullenweg, who runs his personal supplier known as Automattic, started loudly criticizing WP Engine again in September, calling it a “most cancers to WordPress.” He stated that the third-party supplier’s identify has confused clients into pondering it is really a part of WordPress. He additionally accused WP Engine of turning off sure options to economize.

WP Engine responded with a cease-and-desist letter and a request to withdraw the aforementioned feedback, according to reporting by TechCrunch. It additionally stated that its use of the WordPress trademark was authorized below honest use. It went on to say that Mullenweg threatened to take a “scorched earth nuclear method” towards WP Engine until it agreed to pay “a big proportion of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.”

After this, the WordPress Basis changed its Trademark Policy page and accused WP Engine of “by no means as soon as” donating to the open-source arm of the muse, “regardless of making billions of income on prime of WordPress.” He went so far as to counsel that WP Engine lined up trademark abuse by enhancing web sites.

Mullenweg additionally banned WP Engine from accessing sure assets, like some plug-ins and themes. WP Engine powers over 200,000 web sites and this transfer allegedly broke a number of them. In response, the corporate wrote that Mullenweg’s “unprecedented and unwarranted motion interferes with the conventional operation of all the WordPress ecosystem, impacting not simply WP Engine and our clients.”

On October 1, WP Engine introduced that it had developed its personal answer that allowed shoppers to entry the entire lacking themes and plug-ins. It adopted that with right now’s lawsuit, which accuses Mullenweg of demanding eight p.c of the corporate’s month-to-month income as a royalty fee. The swimsuit additionally alleges that Mullenweg and Automattic participated in libel, slander, violations of the Pc Fraud and Abuse Act and IRS fraud.

“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the past ten days has uncovered important conflicts of curiosity and governance points that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that belief,” WP Engine stated in an announcement. “WP Engine has no alternative however to pursue these claims to guard its individuals, company companions, clients and the broader WordPress neighborhood.” Mullenweg and Automattic have but to answer right now’s developments.

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