Judge blocks WordPress from blocking WP Engine

Latest in the WordPress v. WP Engine battle: California judge issues an injunction against WordPress.

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The latest round in the battle between WordPress owner Automattic and WP Engine was won by the latter with California District Court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issuing an injunction to prevent Automattic blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources and continuing to interfere with its plugins.

“While Defendants characterize WP Engine’s harm as self-imposed because it built its business around a website ‘that it had no contractual right to use…’ Defendants’ role in helping that harm materialize through their recent targeted actions toward WPEngine, and no other competitor, cannot be ignored,” she wrote.

Where this all came from. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg had publicly complained about trademark violations, alleging that WP Engine was illegitimately monetizing them while misleading consumers to believe that there is a formal affiliation between WP Engine and WordPress. Cease and desist letters were exchanged. Then WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Mullenweg and Auttomatic accusing them of extortion.

Why we care. A lot of marketing (and news) organizations rely on WordPress, still the dominant player in the CMS market. Anything which makes the content creation journey bumpier is regrettable. Mullenweg has yet to rage about the decision on his blog, but we’re keeping an eye on it.

Dig deeper: WordPress moves to ban WP Engine from accessing its resources

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About the author

Kim Davis
Contributor
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.

Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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