In a cease and desist letter dated September 23, a lawyer from Perkins Coie wrote that they were writing while representing “Automattic Inc. and WooCommerce, Inc.” One section of that was titled “Violations of Our WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy” and has this information under the heading:

It is further inappropriate that you violated the terms of your WordCamp US Sponsorship Agreement, which specified clearly that “any use of the WordPress trademarks is subject to the WordPress Trademark Policy listed at http://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy.” You repeatedly and intentionally violated the WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy’s prohibition on the “use [of] the[] [WordPress marks] as part of a product, project, service, domain name, or company name,” as demonstrated in Exhibit B attached hereto.

(We are not linking to the letter because it exposes the email addresses of various people associated with WP Engine.)

The WordPress Foundation is supposed to be separate from Automattic. So what appears to be a conflation of the foundation and a subsidiary of it with Automattic is problematic, if not illegal.

The apparent conflation of the two made it in to a federal lawsuit against Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg filed on October 2. In the lawsuit, there is the is claim ‘WPE later learned that in July 2024, Automattic had filed new trademark registration applications, seeking registration for the first time of phrases commonly used in the WordPress ecosystem such as “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.”‘ Matt Mullenweg is one of three directors of the WordPress Foundation.

Looking at the application for those trademarks shows no mention of Automattic, but the applications were signed by someone named Chloe Bringmann, who listed their position as Chief of Staff. There was someone who worked for Automattic until very recently with that name. A former Automattic employee has stated that they were the Chief of Staff of Automattic. Just to add more confusion to the whole thing, they were once mentioned on WordPress news blog as Chief of Staff with no entity defined, which would reasonably suggest they were in that role at WordPress.

In TechCrunch story last week by Ivan Mehta that helps to explain why Automattic would have been interested in those trademarks, there was this was a curious explanation by Matt Mullenweg as to what was going on with the WordPress Foundation:

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, or why. He said that he doesn’t know about day-to-day operations of the Foundation and volunteers are the ones who handle it.

So the CEO of Automattic, whose is also one of the directors of the WordPress Foundation, is claiming he didn’t know that he was unaware that an employee of Automattic was applying for trademarks on behalf of the foundation. It gets odder when you consider there are no paid staff of the foundation. So it consists of only of the board and the “volunteers.”

On Friday, the foundation for the first time published the minutes of a board meeting. The meeting happened the day before and it seems to have been their annual meeting. The minutes of the meeting make no mention of any discussion of the trademark applications. That is a strange omission. They are part of a federal lawsuit involving one of the board members and yet there were no questions raised about what is going on there.

While that wasn’t discussed, the meeting minutes are filled with indications that the foundation is intertwined with Automattic.

In addition to the three board members, there were three “Guests/Observers.” Based on their names, all three are Automattic employees who are claimed on the WordPress website to spending 40 hours a week on WordPress sponsored by Automattic.

One of those Automattic employees was cited as giving the board a recommendation:

The board, alongside a recommendation from Harmony Romo, identified that the foundation should maintain a balance of $150,000.

They also are able to communicate with the foundation’s bankers:

Harmony Romo will discuss this with the J.P. Morgan representatives and follow up with options and details via email.

They also were familiar with a tax return for the foundation that isn’t public:

Harmony Romo shared that in the filing of the 2023 WordPress Foundations Form 990 the foundation highlighted do_action and learn.wordpress.org programs.

The board appears to not have been as tied in with the tax returns:

Chele Chiavacci Farley requested that moving forward all financials shared with the board include the prior years financials, and that we ensure a board meeting is held prior to when taxes are due.

Another Automattic employee was apparently more aware of what the foundation is doing than the board:

Isotta Peira shared updates on the various WordPress Foundation and WordPress Community Support, PBC programs.

If that were not enough conflation with Automattic, twice in the meeting minutes, the Executive Director of WordPress.org was mentioned. First, their appointment:

It was noted that Mary Hubbard will be starting as the new Executive Director of WordPress.org next week.

And then, mention of having additional board meeting, in part for them to provide an update to the board:

Matt Mullenweg suggested that the foundation move from one annual meeting to two meetings annually. Mark Ghosh and Chele Chiavacci Farley agreed this would be beneficial as it would allow the new Executive Director to provide an update and opportunities to review financials prior to tax filings being due.

The new Executive Director, as was the only previous one, is an employee of Automattic. WordPress.org is not part of the foundation, but apparently personally owned by Matt Mullenweg. So what would their relevancy to the foundation be?