Automattic just escalated its legal battle with hosting giant WP Engine, filing explosive counterclaims that accuse the Silver Lake-backed company of deliberately misusing WordPress trademarks to boost its $2 billion valuation. The 40-page filing reveals how private equity interests allegedly drove WP Engine to rebrand itself as 'The WordPress Technology Company' while cutting costs and breaking promises to the open source community.
The WordPress ecosystem just got messier. Automattic, the company behind the world's most popular content management system, dropped a legal bombshell Friday with counterclaims that paint hosting provider WP Engine as a trademark-abusing bad actor driven by private equity profit motives.
The 40-page filing directly counters WP Engine's original lawsuit from October 2024, which portrayed Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg as an abusive industry bully. But Automattic's version tells a different story - one where Silver Lake Partners invested $250 million in WP Engine and immediately pushed the company toward what the filing calls 'deliberate trademark infringement.'
'After Silver Lake's investment, WP Engine shifted from fair use to trademark infringement,' the counterclaims allege, according to court documents filed Friday. The hosting company began calling itself 'The WordPress Technology Company' and allowed partners to refer to it as 'WordPress Engine' - moves that Automattic says crossed legal lines.
The trademark violations weren't subtle. WP Engine launched products with names like 'Core WordPress' and 'Headless WordPress' while promising customers it had committed 5% of its resources to support the WordPress ecosystem. According to the filing, those promises were never kept. Instead, WP Engine 'pretended to engage in licensing discussions, but actually delayed and negotiated in bad faith.'
Silver Lake's fingerprints are all over the alleged strategy. The counterclaims suggest the private equity firm guided WP Engine's behavior, with trademark violations driven by a simple calculation: paying proper licensing fees would hurt the company's earnings and valuation, directly impacting Silver Lake's expected returns.
