WP Engine is sending a cease and desist letter to Automattic over Mullenweg’s comments

WordPress hosting service WP Engine on Monday sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic after late CEO Matt Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer on WordPress” last week.

The notice asks Automattic and Mullenweg to retract their comments and stop making statements against the company.

WP Engine, (like Automattic itself) sells the open WordPress project, also accused Mllenweg of threatening WP Engine before the WordCamp conference held last week.

“Automattic CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine agreed to pay Automattic – his for-profit organization – a large sum of money ahead of his September 20th keynote at the WordCamp US Conference, he would step in himself . described the ‘hot nuclear path’ towards WP Engine for the WordPress community and beyond,” the letter reads.

“When his extravagant financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by repeatedly making false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers and the world at large,” the letter added.

The letter goes on to allege that Automattic last week began asking WP Engine to pay it “a significant percentage of its total revenue — tens of millions of dollars in fact — on an ongoing basis” for a license to use trademarks such as “WordPress.”

WP Engine has defended its use of the “WordPress” trademark under fair use rules and said it complies with forum guidelines. The letter also contains screenshots of Mullenweg’s messages to WP Engine’s CEO and board members in which it appears Mullenweg will file a lawsuit to block WP Engine from public WordPress events in his WordCamp speech if the company doesn’t comply with Automattic’s demands.

Automattic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mullenweg, who co-created WordPress, last week criticized WP Engine for collecting profits without giving much back to the open source project, while disabling key features that made WordPress such a powerful platform in the first place.

Last week, in a blog post, Mullenweg said WP Engine is devoting 47 hours a week to the “Future Five” investment pledge to dedicate resources to the continued growth of WordPress. By comparison, he said Automattic was giving away about $3,900 a week. He admitted that although these figures are only “proxy”, there is a big gap in contribution even though both companies are the same size and make about half a billion in revenue. (WP Engine pushes back against that simulation in its C&D manual.)

In a separate blog post, he also said that WP Engine offers customers a “cheap knock-off” of WordPress.

Notably, Automattic invested in WP Engine in 2011, when the company raised $1.2 million in funding. Since then, WP Engine has raised more than $300 million in revenue, most of which came from a $250 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake in 2018.