The bitter legal feud between Automattic and WP Engine has taken yet another dramatic turn, with newly surfaced court filings suggesting that Automattic’s campaign to extract licensing fees from WP Engine was not an isolated shakedown but rather the opening salvo in a broader strategy to demand royalties from as many as ten major WordPress hosting companies. The revelations, disclosed in legal documents filed in a San Francisco federal court, have sent shockwaves through the open-source community and raised urgent questions about the future governance of one of the internet’s most critical platforms.

According to Slashdot, WP Engine’s legal team introduced evidence in court suggesting that Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and his company had drawn up plans to approach approximately ten hosting providers with demands for trademark licensing fees tied to their use of the WordPress name and ecosystem. WP Engine characterized the effort as a coordinated campaign to monetize the WordPress trademark at the expense of the broader community that has contributed to the platform’s success over two decades.

The Origins of a High-Stakes Feud

The dispute between Automattic and WP Engine erupted into public view in late 2024, when Mullenweg publicly accused WP Engine of being a “cancer to WordPress” and alleged the company was profiting enormously from the WordPress ecosystem without contributing its fair share back. Mullenweg argued that WP Engine’s use of the WordPress and “WP” trademarks created consumer confusion and that the company owed licensing fees for its commercial exploitation of the brand. WP Engine fired back with a lawsuit alleging abuse of power, extortion, and attempts to monopolize the WordPress ecosystem.

The legal battle has been closely watched not just for its financial implications — both companies are valued in the billions — but for what it portends for the governance of open-source software projects. WordPress powers roughly 43% of all websites on the internet, making any disruption to its ecosystem a matter of global significance. The case has also drawn attention to the unusual dual structure of WordPress governance, in which the WordPress Foundation ostensibly oversees the open-source project while Automattic, a for-profit company also led by Mullenweg, operates WordPress.com and exerts significant influence over the WordPress.org repository and community resources.

New Filings Reveal a Broader Licensing Ambition

The latest filings from WP Engine’s legal team allege that internal Automattic communications reveal a deliberate plan to target multiple hosting companies — not just WP Engine — for trademark royalties. According to the court documents, Automattic had identified roughly ten companies in the WordPress hosting space that it believed should be paying licensing fees. WP Engine’s attorneys argued that this evidence demonstrates the campaign against their client was not a principled stand for open-source values but rather a calculated revenue-generation strategy.

As reported by Slashdot, WP Engine’s filing stated that Automattic’s leadership had discussed the licensing plan internally before publicly targeting WP Engine, suggesting the public confrontation was designed to set a precedent that could then be applied to other hosting providers. If true, this would represent a fundamental shift in how the WordPress ecosystem operates — transforming what has long been an open platform into one where significant commercial participants must pay tribute to Automattic for the privilege of building businesses around WordPress.

Mullenweg’s Defense and the Open-Source Argument

Matt Mullenweg and Automattic have consistently maintained that their actions are motivated by a desire to protect the WordPress community and ensure that companies profiting from the ecosystem contribute back to it. Mullenweg has pointed to Automattic’s own contributions to WordPress core development and argued that companies like WP Engine extract disproportionate value while giving relatively little in return. He has framed the licensing demand as a matter of fairness and sustainability for the open-source project.

However, critics have noted that the WordPress software itself is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which explicitly permits commercial use, modification, and redistribution. The trademark argument — that companies need a license to use the WordPress name commercially — occupies a legally distinct but practically contentious space. Many in the open-source community have argued that aggressive trademark enforcement against ecosystem participants undermines the spirit of open-source collaboration, even if it may be technically permissible under trademark law.

Industry Reaction and the Hosting Community’s Anxiety

The revelation that Automattic may have planned to demand royalties from as many as ten hosting companies has understandably rattled the WordPress hosting industry. Companies such as Bluehost, SiteGround, GoDaddy, Kinsta, and Flywheel — all of which have built substantial businesses around WordPress hosting — now face the prospect of being targeted with similar licensing demands. While none of these companies have been publicly named in the court filings as specific targets, the mere possibility has introduced significant uncertainty into their business planning.

Several industry observers have noted that the dispute has already had tangible consequences for the WordPress ecosystem. In late 2024, Automattic took the extraordinary step of banning WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org plugin and theme repositories, effectively cutting off the hosting company’s customers from critical updates and security patches. The move was widely condemned, and Automattic eventually relented under pressure, but the incident demonstrated the degree of control that Automattic and Mullenweg exercise over WordPress infrastructure — control that many in the community now view with deep suspicion.

The Governance Crisis at the Heart of WordPress

At its core, the Automattic-WP Engine dispute has exposed a governance crisis that has been simmering in the WordPress community for years. The WordPress Foundation, a nonprofit entity, holds the WordPress trademarks and is theoretically independent of Automattic. In practice, however, Mullenweg serves as both the CEO of Automattic and a dominant figure in the Foundation, creating what critics describe as an irreconcilable conflict of interest. The Foundation’s board has been criticized for its lack of independence and transparency, and calls for governance reform have grown louder as the legal battle has progressed.

The situation has drawn comparisons to other open-source governance disputes, such as the controversy surrounding Oracle’s stewardship of MySQL and Java after its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, and the more recent tensions around HashiCorp’s decision to relicense Terraform away from a fully open-source model. In each case, the central question has been the same: who truly controls an open-source project, and what obligations do commercial stewards owe to the broader community? The WordPress dispute adds a new dimension by centering the conflict on trademark rights rather than software licensing, but the underlying power dynamics are strikingly similar.

Legal Implications and What Comes Next

The case is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and legal experts say it could set important precedents for how trademarks are enforced within open-source ecosystems. If Automattic prevails in establishing that hosting companies must pay for the right to use the WordPress name in their marketing and branding, it could create a template for other open-source project stewards to monetize their trademarks in similar fashion. Conversely, if WP Engine succeeds in demonstrating that Automattic’s actions constitute anticompetitive behavior or abuse of trademark rights, it could significantly constrain the ability of open-source trademark holders to extract licensing fees from ecosystem participants.

Discovery in the case has already produced a trove of internal communications that have proven embarrassing for Automattic. The company’s legal team has sought to limit the disclosure of certain documents, arguing that they contain proprietary business strategies, but WP Engine’s attorneys have successfully argued for broader disclosure, contending that the public interest in understanding how the WordPress ecosystem is governed outweighs Automattic’s confidentiality concerns.

A Community Watching and Waiting

For the tens of thousands of developers, designers, and small business owners who depend on WordPress for their livelihoods, the outcome of this case carries enormous weight. The WordPress community has long prided itself on its openness and accessibility — values that have helped the platform grow from a simple blogging tool into the backbone of nearly half the web. The prospect that a single company could leverage trademark rights to extract royalties from major ecosystem participants threatens to fundamentally alter the economics and culture of the WordPress world.

As the case moves toward trial, both sides have shown little appetite for compromise. WP Engine has framed the dispute as an existential fight for the principle that open-source ecosystems should remain open, while Automattic has cast its licensing demands as a necessary measure to ensure the long-term health of the WordPress project. The court’s eventual ruling will likely reverberate far beyond the WordPress community, shaping how open-source trademarks are understood, enforced, and contested for years to come. For now, the hosting industry, the developer community, and the millions of website owners who rely on WordPress can only watch as two of the ecosystem’s most powerful players wage a legal war that could redefine the rules of engagement for everyone.