WPEngine, a prominent hosting and plugin company for WordPress, has won a significant preliminary court victory against Matt Mullenweg, the co-creator of WordPress. A federal judge in California granted WPEngine’s request for an injunction, ordering Mullenweg and his companies to cease interfering with WPEngine’s customer contracts and to restore its access to the wordpress.org platform.
The dispute emerged after Mullenweg, who founded Automattic and heads the WordPress Foundation, accused WPEngine of exploiting the platform without contributing to it. WPEngine’s lawsuit alleged that Mullenweg attempted to force the company to sign a licensing agreement that would grant Automattic 8% of WPEngine’s monthly revenue, and give the WordPress Foundation control over some of its employees' work. When WPEngine refused, Mullenweg allegedly retaliated by limiting WPEngine’s access to essential tools and resources on wordpress.org, and encouraging customers to abandon WPEngine.
The court found that WPEngine was likely to succeed in proving that Mullenweg’s actions interfered with its contracts, and emphasized the importance of maintaining access to essential tools for millions of websites relying on WPEngine. The judge also stated that preventing disruption from this corporate dispute was in the public interest.
In response, Automattic stated that the ruling was preliminary and expressed confidence in prevailing at trial, stating that a full review would take place. WPEngine hailed the decision as a step toward restoring stability to the WordPress ecosystem, ensuring continued access for its customers.
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