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Posted by pentagrama 9/13/2025

Legal win(ma.tt)
263 points | 237 commentspage 3
Sophistifunk 9/13/2025||
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systemswizard 9/13/2025||
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tomhow 9/13/2025|
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what you're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pessimizer 9/13/2025||
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blinding-streak 9/13/2025||
As someone who is not very familiar with this whole saga, it sounds like both sides lost their marbles? Which is the lesser of two evils?
nchmy 9/13/2025||
i dont recommend WPE to anyone, but they have done nothing wrong.

If you care, you could learn plenty here https://gist.github.com/adrienne/aea9dd7ca19c8985157d9c42f7f...

nchmy 9/13/2025||
you could just read the legal document, as others in this thread have, rather than rely on an "unreliable narrator"...

Surely no sane person is on WPE's side. They're just vehemently against Matt, who has proven to be a complete psychopath

viadm_co 9/13/2025||
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gg-plz 9/13/2025||
[dead]
toasted-subs 9/13/2025||
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liviux 9/13/2025||
The mad lad won his case, but lost his reputation.
ocdtrekkie 9/13/2025||
He didn't win. He won in the way Apple won over Epic. (Apple lost.) People seem not to understand that in a lawsuit like this the lawyers throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. WPEngine surely didn't expect all of this to fly... but some of it did.
nchmy 9/13/2025||
he hasnt come even slightly close to winning his case
the_real_cher 9/13/2025||
It's not clear to me that he's in the wrong.

https://ma.tt/2024/09/wordpress-engine/

tsimionescu 9/13/2025|
It's not clear to you that trying to use trademark law to prevent a company selling WordPress software from saying they offer WordPress software is "being in the wrong"?
the_real_cher 9/13/2025||
isn't that what trademark law is for?
tsimionescu 9/14/2025|||
Trademark law exists to protect consumers from counterfeit goods. Basically, it exists to allow consumers to recognize the goods of someone they have established trust with. If I know I like Coca Cola, I can just buy any bottle that has the Coca Cola trademark and know what I'm getting, instead of worrying I'll get a completely different beverage.

This gets more complicated when multiple companies are selling services for the same open source software, because you want all of them to be able to say what their services are for, but you don't want one of them to tarnish the reputation of the software itself. But as long as all the companies are actually selling services for the same software, like in the case of WPEngine and the other company here, consumers are better served and informed if both call it WordPress.

pests 9/14/2025|||
No.
edm0nd 9/13/2025|
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tomhow 9/13/2025||
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who or what it's about. Please take care to observe the guidelines if you want to participate here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

giveita 9/13/2025||
Outside of cryptocurrency yeah