WordPress parent company must stop blocking WP Engine, judge rules

WP Engine just won a preliminary injunction against WordPress.com parent company Automattic. On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins.

The preliminary injunction comes after WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, filed a lawsuit that accused Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, of “multiple forms of immediate irreparable harm.” It later asked the court to stop Mullenweg from restricting WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org.

Mullenweg waged a public campaign against WP Engine in September, accusing the service of misusing the WordPress trademark and not contributing enough to the WordPress community. After blocking WP Engine from WordPress.org’s servers, Automattic took control of WP Engine’s ACF Plugin.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found merit in WP Engine’s claims that Automattic’s actions harmed business relationships, saying Mullenweg’s “conduct is designed to induce breach or disruption.” As for Automattic’s argument that blamed WP Engine for relying on WordPress.org to power its business, Judge Martínez-Olguín didn’t find it very compelling.

“While Defendants characterize WPEngine’s harm as self-imposed because it built its business around a website ‘that it had no contractual right to use…’ Defendants’ role in helping that harm materialize through their recent targeted actions toward WPEngine, and no other competitor, cannot be ignored,” the ruling states.

The Verge reached out to Automattic and WP Engine with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

The ruling found the WP Engine showed it will suffer irreparable harm without injunctive relief, while also impacting members of the WordPress community. Under the preliminary injunction, Automattic will have to take down the list of companies it displayed on a site it created to track outgoing WP Engine customers, as well as remove the checkbox that asks WordPress users to verify they’re not affiliated with WP Engine when logging in.