The WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy Was Just Updated

This is very concerning to any company that uses WP in their brand name.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240924024555/https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

Source Tweet / Diff

Before:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.

When in doubt about your use of the WordPress or WordCamp name or logo, please contact the Foundation for clarification.

After:

The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

If you would like to use the WordPress trademark commercially, please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license. Their only sub-licensee is Newfold.

For non-commercial use, you can contact us here at the Foundation.

32 Comments

  1. It looks like “someone” really wants to have 8% of WP Engine profits to fund the Automattic business.

  4. >They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

    Is this real? They really put that on the site? How childish and petty wow… also, doesn’t WPE donate engineering time to core? Is that not donating to the foundation?

  6. This is ultra levels of petty and obviously limits the scope of what it means to support the WordPress community to something so specific that it’s mostly meaningless. This is just Automattic trying to find a way to charge other companies for their work.

  9. Coming from a competitor to WP Engine…

    This is just fucking ridiculous and childish.

    This will affect SO many brands and products.

    What restrictions will come next?

    I won’t stop supporting this community but they need to get their shit together.

    WP Engine has the money to fight back, I’m looking forward to it.

  10. WP is used in millions of WP products, sites, themes, and plugin names. 

    They are a bunch of childish dopes. Fuck em.

  11. One of the first things I learned from a Chris Lema blog many eons ago, when I was first learning about WordPress, was that it was okay to use WP in a product or service name, but WordPress in a name was a no-no.

    Nice and simple.

  12. He’s lost his ever-lovin mind. To literally call out another company in your Trademark Policy is unprofessional at best. He is basically Elon at this point. The board needs to take his internet access away.

  13. So I guess WP Buffs, WPBeginner, WPMU DEV, WPForms, WP Rocket, WP Astra, WP Mail SMTP, WPML, WP Explorer, WP Mayor, WP Tavern, WPZoom, WP Touch, WP Fusion, WP Simple Pay, WP Ninjas, WP Recipe Maker, WP Elevation, WP Complete, SolidWP and others are in trouble. Even good old Spanish resource AyudaWP is in trouble.

  14. This is my understanding of the situation. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong:

    – At some point, Matt transferred the WordPress trademark to the Foundation.
    – Subsequently, the Foundation (Matt) granted Automattic (Also Matt) the exclusive ability to sub-license the trademark commercially.
    – Accordingly, any licensing fees now go to the for-profit company Matt owns, and are not subject to community wishes or scrutiny.
    – Because the money would go to Automattic, the company making the payment (ie WPEngine – a direct competitor) would have no say or insight into how it is used.

    Is that about right?

  15. I saw on Twitter that the WordPress foundation also put in two applications in July of this year for “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress”. Seems like they may be trying to do the same play with all hosting providers in the space.

  17. This is super petty… This whole fiasco sounds like something you’d expect out of Elon, not a respected open source project.

  18. Does anyone know how Automattic got exclusive rights in the first place to the trademark?

    Given the amount of money being made for literally nothing when it comes to licensing, curious how much WordPress foundation received for selling them, was there a tender process, were they simply gifted away etc. Can’t find much about it.

  20. It says
    > We’d like to make it hard for anyone to use the WordPress or WordCamp name and logo to unfairly profit from, trick or confuse people who are looking for official WordPress or WordCamp resources.

    Oh, yeah, like wordpress (dot) com . Readers of this sub aren’t confused by that. No siree. Not confused at all.

    Then there’s wordpress.stackexchange.com . If that site were worth more than a plugin that hasn’t been updated in a decade, that would be something to worry about.

    C’mon, people. We catch many more flies with honey than with lighter fluid.

  22. Thats not a change. It still says you can use WP. But it says ‘please’ dont use it in a confusing manner. You could. And ‘please’ would have only scarce legal weight imo.

  23. No one has ever confused “WP Engine” as WordPress Engine. Though now Matt seems ot be saying the WPE are infingring on the use of “WordPress” on their site. So which is it?

    “Wordpress.com” on the other hand – we get 5+ posts a day in this sub alone from people who have no idea that self-hosted WordPress even exists.

  24. What the FUCK is Matt Mullenweg smoking?

    I’ve been a WordPress (fuck you, Matt, I’m using your trademark properly) developer since 2011 and up until this summer, he’s always seemed to be a decent person.

  29. Yeah Matt needs to step down or the entire board needs to resign. I’m all against PE /VC creating enshitification of a product, but this a speed run death of everything WordPress has built over the years.

  30. This has all the signs of a flame out 🔥

    And it really concerns me. I’m currently leading a massive WP project at a public college.

    Formerly an independent web dev, I closed a business in 2021 that had WP in the brand name, logo, URL, etc.

    Will be wild to watch this all play out.

  32. Is this a shit post? That policy sounds very unofficial and crazy to call out a specific organization.

 

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