It's not about WP in the company name. It's about loosely using the words "Wordpress" and "WooCommerce" all over their website in ways that violate trademarks.
Someone who is in the market for Wordpress hosting is almost certainly aware they have Wordpress and that they need hosting for it. Wordpress is a nominative use to refer to the entity, and Core is an adjective which in context means central.
Do you actually think there are meaningful numbers of people who have believed that WPEngine is actually wordpress itself? That would be the standard. Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular basis.
Yes.
"Wordpress.com leads to much more confusion on a regular basis."
Wordpress.com has a license to use the Wordpress trademark. I don't believe we should be comparing Wordpress.com to WP Engine here.
So yeah, from my perspective there's a real case for confusion of marks here.
I have no opinion about the drama one way or the other, just providing a datum.