A major new chapter has unfolded in the ongoing legal battle between WP Engine, a large WordPress hosting provider, and Automattic, the company led by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. WP Engine recently amended its complaint with previously redacted material that raises serious, detailed allegations about strategic actions and internal communications – hinting at behavior that could reshape perceptions of competition and governance in the WordPress ecosystem.
This development is important for developers, open source advocates, enterprise users of WordPress, and legal observers because it exposes internal statements and alleged plans that were previously unavailable to the public. Below, we unpack what’s in the newly unredacted complaint, the specific claims WP Engine is making, the context behind those claims, and what it may imply about market conduct and community governance around WordPress.
What’s New in the Third Amended Complaint
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WP Engine’s third amended complaint in the US District Court for the Northern District of California adds material that was previously redacted, including internal communications and descriptions of strategic plans allegedly attributed to Mullenweg and Senior leaders at Automattic. These allegations expand on earlier claims that Automattic’s actions went beyond trademark disputes and entered into anti-competitive behavior.
The newly unredacted material falls into several themes:
- Threat language allegedly used by Mullenweg
- Direct outreach to a major payments platform
- Acknowledgment of the power to “destroy all competition.”
- Evidence of coercive pricing and competitive targeting
- Plans to target at least ten competitors with similar demands
Each of these categories builds a narrative that WP Engine argues is far more expansive than the first filings suggested.
“Nuclear War”: Strong Language or Strategic Posturing?
One of the most striking newly revealed allegations involves language purportedly used by Mullenweg in internal or private communications. WP Engine claims that emails and messages show him referring to the conflict with WP Engine in terms that suggest a willingness to engage in an all-out, “nuclear war” approach if the company didn’t meet demands.
The defendants had previously said he did not use the phrase “nuclear war,” but the amended complaint alleges exactly that, quoting wording such as: “for example, with WPE . . . [i]f that doesn’t resolve well it’ll look like all-out nuclear war.”
While unusual in business disputes, this language is at the center of the complaint’s characterization of coercive tactics. If validated, it indicates that the dispute wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill disagreement over trademarks but involved statements suggesting escalation of competitive actions. These allegations can affect how a judge or jury interprets intent, particularly under antitrust frameworks.
Alleged Email to Stripe: Tactics to Limit Competitive Access
Another newly unredacted allegation concerns an email Mullenweg reportedly sent to a senior executive at Stripe, the global payments platform. The complaint claims he asked Stripe to “cancel any contracts or partnerships with WP Engine,” and asserted that if Stripe declined, Automattic should exit its own contracts.
This allegation is significant for two reasons:
- It suggests coordinated pressure on third-party service providers to disadvantage a direct competitor.
- It expands the potential scope of conduct beyond internal discussions to attempts at exerting influence on external business relationships.
If proven, such outreach could be interpreted as trading on strategic leverage to limit competitors’ access to essential infrastructure, which can be relevant in antitrust and tortious interference claims.
“Destroy All Competition” and Competitive Power
In the unredacted complaint, WP Engine cites documents where Automattic allegedly acknowledges having the ability to “destroy all competition.” WP Engine’s attorneys use this to argue that Automattic’s influence extends not just from company size but from structural positions in the WordPress ecosystem—such as control over WordPress.org’s nonprofit infrastructure and its management of the core open source project.
This point ties into broader concerns about the modern open source landscape:
- Organizations once viewed as community stewards now straddle roles as for-profit competitors.
- Decisions about access to foundational infrastructure (like plugin repositories or update servers) can materially impact competitors’ businesses.
- As a consequence, actions that might be acceptable in typical competitive markets raise unique governance questions in open source communities.
For example, WP Engine alleges that programs like “Five for the Future” were used not principally as community initiatives but as leverage to benefit Automattic’s commercial interests, forcing competitors to contribute in ways that primarily served Automattic rather than the entire project. This claim connects community resource allocation with broader strategic intent in ways that complicate traditional interpretations of open source stewardship.
Contradicting Trademark Enforcement Claims
Automattic has publicly maintained that its trademark enforcement and licensing demands were legitimate and in line with protecting the WordPress brand. However, the amended complaint highlights internal acknowledgements suggesting that competitors already received the same benefits without a licensing fee, undermining the idea that demands were purely about enforcement rather than economic gain.
WP Engine’s attorneys frame this discrepancy as evidence that trademark enforcement was used strategically, rather than consistently across the ecosystem. Such contrasting internal versus external messaging can be powerful in court, particularly when assessing motives and consistency of application in trademark rights.
Coercive “Carrot and Stick” Competitive Strategy
The amended complaint also includes unredacted internal communications indicating a planned “carrot or stick” approach to competition:
- Defendants allegedly expected to enforce compliance whether through cooperation (“carrot”) or competitive actions (“stick”).
- Internal documents reportedly categorize market participants into groups based on their willingness to “contribute” and describe others as “free game.”
This language plays a central role in the alleged antitrust narrative: WP Engine’s legal team argues that such internal categorization and planned competitive actions reflect exclusionary conduct, not community stewardship. It also feeds into claims that Automattic used its position to influence rival companies’ business decisions in ways that transcend fair market competition.
A Broader Pattern: Targeting Ten Competitors
Perhaps the most expansive allegation in the amended complaint is that WP Engine was not an isolated case. The filing claims that Automattic’s strategy was to pursue similar licensing fee demands against at least ten other competitors, such as Newfold and unnamed entities, which were already paying substantial sums.
Documents cited indicate that these deals involved considerable payments tied to trademark usage, different from what WP Engine argues is acceptable under fair use or community norms. Internal messages allegedly show Mullenweg indicating that contributions required could always be increased, suggesting negotiable and commercially driven arrangements rather than clear, standardized policies.
This alleged pattern is relevant because it supports WP Engine’s assertion that the behavior was part of a broader strategic market approach, not an isolated dispute.
Market Context and the WordPress Ecosystem
To understand why this litigation has drawn such scrutiny, some background is helpful. WordPress powers a significant portion of the web—over 40% of all sites—and has deep roots in open source development. Hosting providers like WP Engine build business models around supporting and scaling the platform.
Conflicts between a large host and the steward of the software project highlight tensions that can arise when commercial and community interests intersect. Similar dynamics have played out in other ecosystems (e.g., Linux distributions and commercial vendors), but the open source nature of WordPress and the multinational scale of its adoption amplify the stakes.
The legal battle has already seen significant developments, such as injunctions restoring certain access rights and back-and-forth cease-and-desist communications. The unredacted allegations now raise the intensity of these disputes by adding narrative detail about internal intentions and competitive strategies that go beyond superficial disagreements.
Legal and Business Implications
These new allegations add complexity to several different legal fronts:
- Antitrust and monopolization claims – If a dominant market actor uses its influence to extract licensing fees or influence third-party relationships, that could meet legal standards of anti-competitive conduct in U.S. law.
- Trademark enforcement legitimacy – Contradictory internal documentation about benefits already provided to competitors may weaken claims that enforcement was consistently grounded in legitimate brand protection.
- Tortious interference – Outreach to external service providers (like Stripe) alleged in the complaint may be interpreted as attempts to sabotage competition beyond ordinary competitive behavior.
- Governance of open source foundations – The case puts governance structures under scrutiny, especially where stewardship and commercial interests intersect.
WordPress remains one of the most widely used software platforms in the world, making outcomes here relevant not just to the parties involved but to how open source community governance and competitive business models intersect in practice.
Ongoing Proceedings
The next steps in this litigation process depend on judicial rulings concerning motions and evidentiary submissions and the potential counterclaims that Automattic will present. The unredacted material supports WP Engine’s argument that its claims have actual internal backing, which proves they are not simply unproven assumptions.
The upcoming deposits, court filings, and potential trial proceedings will provide additional information about the opposing stories and the effectiveness of both sides’ legal approaches throughout this highly publicized conflict.
