The truth about these trademark complaints against WP Engine, the demand for extraordinary amounts of money and his attempt to trademark very common terms all boil down to one thing.
WP Cloud. Matt wants you to only be able to host your Free and open source GPL WordPress website with him, on his WP Cloud product. The only reason Newfold/Bluehost has a license, is because they are buying and reselling his WP Cloud hosted product. – https://newfold.com/newsroom/website-professionals-can-now-take-advantage-of-the-new-bluehost
Many PE firms do this to software products they buy, they immediately get greedy, discontinue the download version and force you to purchase a cloud hosted version. It's a very common tactic to increase revenue and bleed a product dry, the only problem this time is that WordPress is open source, it is GPL so the only way they can accomplish this is by trying to bully companies with the trademark. This is a very sad day for what WordPress use to stand for and what open source is about.
Matt needs to step down from the WordPress foundation and turn it over to an independent board of directors as this type of action and attitude shows how far out of touch he is with reality. If he gets his way, WordPress will become a cloud only product where no one can truly make it portable and host it where they wand to.
I would urge anyone involved in WordPress, be they a contributor, or a sponsor to pull their support, cut any funding for any and all WordPress related events, and cease any contributions until this matter is settled.