[mattbeck]

For many years, the official guidance on the trademark has explicitly been that WP was not the trademark and people should use that instead of WordPress. Tons and tons of people use WP in their businesses, domains, product names, etc.

[teddyh]

And, as it turns out, consumer confusion happened anyway.

[Aurornis]

Who are these confused consumers? The people who don’t know much anything about Wordpress except that they want it will end up at Wordpress.com. You have to go out of your way to find alternative hosting providers like WP Engine.

The “confused consumers” thing feels like a manufactured justification for whatever this spat is.

[kijin]

But WPEngine is toeing the line especially precariously.

The company is called WPEngine, sure, but their tagline says "Most trusted WordPress platform". Their plans are named "Essential WordPress", "Core WordPress", etc. Are those products they're selling, or just descriptions? There's enough gray area there to attract a lawyer's attention, which Mullenweg is clearly using to his advantage.

[graeme]

The proper response would be a suit to enforce a trademark, not an explosion of articles, interviews, shutdown of network access and demands for money paid to a private company in order to prevent the explosion.

[Aurornis]

Honestly, what do you expect these people to call their services?

“Essential Blog Hosting Service using a Commonly Used Open Source Software That We Cannot Name”?