WPEngine just won a preliminary injunction against WordPress.com parent company Automattic. On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WPEngine from accessing WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins.
The preliminary injunction comes after third-party WordPress hosting service WPEngine filed a lawsuit accusing Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg of "causing multiple forms of direct and irreparable harm." It then asked the court to stop Mullenweg from restricting WPEngine's access to WordPress.org.
Mullenweg launched a public action against WPEngine in September, accusing the service of misusing the WordPress trademark and not contributing enough to the WordPress community. After blocking WPEngine from WordPress.org’s servers, Automattic took control of WPEngine’s ACF plugin.
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín found that WPEngine was justified in claiming that Automattic's conduct harmed the business relationship, saying Mullenweg's "conduct was intended to induce a breach of contract or to undermine it." As for Automattic's argument accusing WPEngine of relying on WordPress.org to power its business, Judge Martinez-Holguin found it not very convincing.
"Defendants characterize WPEngine's harm as self-inflicted because it built its business around a website 'that it had no contractual right to use...' The defendants' role in helping to achieve this harm through recent targeted actions against WPEngine, but not other competitors, cannot be ignored." The ruling finds that without injunctive relief, WPEngine will suffer irreparable harm, while also affecting members of the WordPress community.
Under the preliminary injunction, Automattic must take down a list of companies that appear on a website it created to track customers who are leaving WPEngine, as well as remove a checkbox that requires WordPress users to verify when they log in that they are not affiliated with WPEngine.
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