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Comment by mikeyinternews | Hacker News Reader

I hope Matt can supply his legal team with conversations that would somehow justify his behaviour. From my (incomplete) reading of the complaint, he (Matt) does indeed look very "petulant". It's almost like he's intentionally self-destructing, which is why I hope for his sake that he has more tangible evidence to share, especially after reading section 201.

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Yes this is part of their smear campaign, just like their last C&D. They're cherry-picking stuff to try and make me look bad, while not addressing the core issue of their trademark violations. They want me to stop telling their customers about their bad behavior.

Matt - that's their job. They're making a complaint against you and Automattic.

The onus is on you now to respond. The best venue for that is the courts, not online forums and social media (that was 2 weeks ago).

Man... You are still talking on the internet publicly, obviously without any lawyer checking out what you say before you post comments. You will inevitably end up posting a lot of things that can make you look bad or sink the case for your side. Just stop talking about this anywhere online and offline. Let the lawyers talk.

As someone who had to handle four websites that suddenly stopped getting Wordpress security updates and updates for plugins because of how you handled this I don’t very much care to hear about “their” bad behavior.

You have no checks and balances so we paid the price. I hope people stop using Wordpress in droves. I hope you have to worry about your business the same way you suddenly made people have to worry about theirs.

How is it even legal for wordpress.org (a public nonprofit) to take these actions on behalf of a for profit?

> How is it even legal for wordpress.org (a public nonprofit) to take these actions on behalf of a for profit?

There are three (or more) entities using the WordPress name now and confusing the heck out of a bunch of commenters, all of them controlled by Matt:

- The WordPress Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the owner of the WordPress trademark.

- WordPress.com/Automattic is the company suing and being sued, and the exclusive commercial licensee of the trademark. They also pay people to work on the Foundation, and on WordPress.org.

- WordPress.org is a website personally run by Matt [1], through another company he owns called Mobius Ltd.

[1] https://x.com/photomatt/status/1840980359673995362

I'm sorry, _their_ smear campaign? That's rich, considering you've been the one on the "scorched earth nuclear" crusade to get rid of a "cancer" from the WP community.

They didn't have to cherry-pick anything to make you look bad. You did that by yourself. While also making a criminal case for extortion.

And regarding their trademark violation: WP Engine was founded in 2010. You've been OK with the trademark violation for 14 years, and suddenly decided to take legal action just now? C'mon. The optics of this don't put you in a good light no matter how you spin it.

How can you use the trademark defense after over a decade of non enforcement? They and others in the space are highly likely covered under fair use.

Matt, stop writing online.

You are giving them more options and a bigger legal attack surface by writing online. If it turns out not to be a smear campaign and a court decides that, that alone is an attack surface for you getting surely convicted of slander.

The legal game is a different one. Get a lawyer and don't write online. Otherwise you will learn to lose everything you've built in your life over some stupid comments online.

Again, get a lawyer. Now. Stop writing. Now. Everything you will write or say will be used against you in the court of law.

There is a damn good reason this is mandatory for every cop to tell you if they arrest you.

You are mounting up the evidence for them. For free. They ragebaited and played you like a fool. Don't be that guy. Play the smart move.

Dude, your "trademark violations" claim is going to get absolutely destroyed in court. I obviously don't have all the details, but I would expect that if you did have more evidence against WPEngine, given how much you're posting in online forums I would expect you would have put forth something that helps your case, and I sure haven't seen it. How can you counter:

1. As their brief makes clear, they have been using the "challenged marks" for over a decade, including a period when you were an investor. You have given no evidence publicly that they changed anything recently - indeed, you publicly stated that the reason for the trademark infringement actions was because you thought they weren't a good contributor to open source, not that they did anything different with the marks.

2. Your recent attempt to trademark "Hosted WordPress" and "Managed WordPress" are pretty bad, and blatant, attempts to rewrite history. If the courts let you trademark this nominative use of a term, it would be a first.

3. Your actions have only targeted WP Engine, not any of the other WordPress hosts that use the marks in the same way.

I definitely am not cherry picking the above - I'm just presenting what I know has been irrefutably announced publicly, and again which I assume you would have already countered if you could given all your other public statements.

It seems less like they're cherry-picking and more like you've attached one of those giant tree-shaker machines to your cherry tree and all they are doing is just standing underneath it catching everything.

Tempted to upvote this just to keep it from disappearing out of evidence.

Yeah opposing council is popping popcorn, none of these posts will disappear.

Please stop talking, for your own sake.

Do you think your ego may have gotten in the way of doing what was best for your business and users here? How was harming so many sites and the WP name justifiable here?

You've been doing that to yourself, since you brought up the FBI in response to "a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere." months ago

Matt, you equally have some pretty bad if not toxic behavior.

You need to do a lot of growing up, and fast, because this isn't fucking Tumblr, dude.

Though amusingly, you are writing to the person who owns Tumblr.

Of course -- and he should keep his temper tantrums to his poor behavior on that platform (like he's done in the past), because it's obvious he can't handle being grown up and handling Wordpress.

> They want me to stop telling their customers about their bad behavior.

I'd say they're very happy to have you continue talking. They couldn't buy better PR.

So they're "cherry picking" things that you said which make you look bad, which are true and accurate - and that's a "smear campaign".

While you are telling lies about trademark violations and extorting money specifically from WPEngine and have publicly admitted you're not doing that to anyone else that provides Wordpress hosting? And you've used terms like "war" and "nuclear option" when threatening the lies you subsequently told?

And somehow you still think _you're_ the good guy here?

:boggle:

Just resign. Make the WordPress Foundation into everything you've pretended it is over the years, including rightful and permanent owner of the trademarks and .org domain, and complete seperate from you personally and Automattic and it's related businesses. _Maybe_ that'll save WordPress. Maybe...

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