WPEngine is asking a court to stop Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg's public activities against the company. In a preliminary injunction motion filed Friday against Automattic and Mullenweg, the third-party hosting platform asked the court to restore its access to WordPress resources and allow it to regain control of plugins that had been taken over.

WPEngine said in its complaint that it is facing "many forms of direct irreparable harm" as a result of Mullenweg and Automattic's actions, including "loss of customers, market share and goodwill." The company also said it saw a 14% increase in service cancellation requests from September 26 to September 30, days after Mullenweg called WPEngine a "cancer" on the WordPress community.

WPEngine asked Automattic to restore its operations to the "status quo" before the dispute began. "Developers are anxious and want assurances that they will not be the next to receive Mullenweg's ransom demands, his next nuclear war target, or the next to have their plugins confiscated," the motion reads. "Defendants' hostile takeover attempt is increasing security risks for everyone in the WordPress community."

Mullenweg's battle with WPEngine escalated after he publicly rebuked the service and claimed it infringed on WordPress trademarks. After Automattic and WPEngine exchanged cease-and-desist orders, WPEngine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg, accusing them of "abuse of power, racketeering, and greed."

Last week, the open-source WordPress.org project, also led by Mullenweg, took over WPEngine’s ACF (i.e. Advanced Custom Fields) plugin. ACF users on WordPress.org have received an “update” migrating them to the WordPress-controlled “forked” secure custom fields plugin. WordPress.org has since published a promotional page specifically for customers looking to switch away from WPEngine, while Automattic has increased its takeover offer to employees who disagree with Mullenweg's behavior.

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