So far, with everything going on with WordPress, there has been a decided lack of new details exposed by journalists. There have been plenty of stories, but most just repeating claims made by various parties in the situation. That changed today, as TechCrunch’s Ivan Mehta reported on an internal Automattic blog post that laid out the strategy of trying to gain more control over the WordPress trademark. Here is part of how he described that:

The message – penned by Automattic’s then-chief legal officer Paul Sieminski in January 2024 on the company’s “P2” (a version of WordPress aimed at internal communications) – outlined a plan for how Automattic would approach this strategy, through direct negotiations with companies and via legal action from “nice and not nice lawyers and trademark enforcers.” And Automattic potentially would register further trademarks going forward.

The person that wrote that had been Automattic’s general counsel since 2012, but the story says he left in April.

The story covers the new trademarks that the WordPress Foundation filed for in July. What it leaves out is than an Automattic employee was the person that signed off on those applications for the foundation. It does include the incredible claim from Matt Mullenweg:

One of these concerns the trademarks that were filed in July 2024. In a conversation with TechCrunch last month, Mullenweg claimed he didn’t know who filed these on behalf of the Foundation, nor why. He said that he doesn’t know about day to day operations of the foundation and volunteers are the ones who handle it.

Mullenweg is one of three members of the board of the WordPress Foundation. So either he isn’t involved in the board or the board isn’t running things. Someone must be in charge of the volunteers. The Automattic employee who signed off on the trademark applications was listed as the Chief of Staff, presumably of the foundation, but she apparently was the Chief of Staff at Automattic. The two other people we have run across that recently had a role in the foundation itself (there is separate for-profit subsidiary as well), were also Automattic employees. All of those employees were claiming to be spending 40 hours a week on WordPress, sponsored by Automattic.

According to the story, the January post mentioned getting more trademarks:

“We will be using a multi-pronged strategy that will involve some additional trademark registrations”

That could be referring to trademarks for Automattic solutions, but it could also be referring to the newly applied trademark for the foundation.

So who ordered the foundation to apply the foundation to apply for the trademark and who is running it?