WordPress.com-owner Automattic Inc. and its CEO are leveraging trademark law to extort tens of millions of dollars from a third-party software developer, according to a new federal lawsuit.
Automattic and CEO Matthew Mullenweg began a “nuclear” war against WPEngine Inc. on Sep. 20 after it refused to pay millions of dollars per year to license trademarks, including “WordPress” and “WooCommerce,” WPEngine said in a complaint filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The defendants allegedly restricted WPE’s access to wordpress.com, falsely disparaged the company, and encouraged customers to move to competitors.
Automattic vehemently denied …
