According to the WordPress Detailed Plugin Guidelines:
"17. Plugins must respect trademarks, copyrights, and project names.
The use of trademarks or other projects as the sole or initial term of a plugin slug is prohibited unless proof of legal ownership/representation can be confirmed."
By continuing to use https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/ are they not violating this very rule?
Here is the full rule:
https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#17-plugins-must-respect-trademarks-copyrights-and-project-names
And the ACF Trademarks:
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=98321164&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=98321135&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch
It doesn’t matter, the whole rule 17 thing was just a flimsy excuse for them taking over the plugin. Trying to apply logic to a narcissist’s personal crusade will only leave you frustrated.
Yes. I’m sure WPE’s lawyers are already on it. Maliciously infringing upon a company’s trademark in retaliation for their alleged infringement upon yours is not a great look.
>By continuing to use [https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/) are they not violating this very rule?
It may well be that they haven’t changed it yet because they haven’t figured out how to do it (or that it cannot be done) without breaking up everything.
hum… wpengine guys now: “can we fork wp and create ‘SecurePress’?”
Since it may come up: the ACF trademarks are not yet finalized. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are unenforceable either. Richard Best (a lawyer, but not an American one) opines on it thusly:
>‘Advanced Custom Fields’ and ‘ACF’ are clearly trademarks. They don’t have to be registered to be protected by law. WP Engine has registrations pending but the marks still have legal protection in the interim. Whilst MM has changed the plugin name to SCF (certainly a required move), ‘ACF’ and ‘advanced-custom-fields’ are still being used throughout the SCF listing and in the downloaded source code. Whether this would be enough to constitute trademark infringement would likely depend on whether the use of the marks is occurring ‘in commerce’ (taking all the context into account, arguably it is despite the fact that SCF is a free plugin ) and is (to summarise) ‘likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake …’. I don’t have enough information to comment further on that.
>One might note in this context, though, that guideline 17 in the Detailed Plugin Guidelines states:
>17. Plugins must respect trademarks, copyrights, and project names.
It’s a good read: https://wpandlegalstuff.com/the-acfscf-fork-and-legal-risk/