Arantor
Well-known member
A few things to remember:
1) WPE is not the only player in this drama with private equity backers, Automattic has those too (and since their last round of investment they will be wanting to see signs of revenue growth, which Automattic doesn’t exactly have)
2) WPE’s use of trademarks was much the same over the last decade including the years when Automattic had invested in WPE
3) There have been leaked documents going back to January this year demonstrating Automattic’s internal counsel talking about monetising the trademarks as an asset; the implication is that WPE is not an outlier, but merely the biggest target and that everyone else will get in line afterwards
4) All of the other big players in this market have been watching very carefully, they have all been following the same playbook as WPE had with respect to the WP trademarks, and they’ve all subtly amended the wording on their sites in much the same way.
5) Automattic internal documents also previously referred to GoDaddy as “an existential threat” suggesting they were very careful about who they picked as their first legal target, suspecting WPE would just roll over (after all, it’s “only” 8% of revenue, “they can afford it” style thinking, but that’s actually about 60% of their total profit because WP hosting isn’t nearly as lucrative as you’d think). Yes, they made $400 million revenue but that’s certainly not $400 million profit (though Matt definitely wants you to think that’s what happened)
1) WPE is not the only player in this drama with private equity backers, Automattic has those too (and since their last round of investment they will be wanting to see signs of revenue growth, which Automattic doesn’t exactly have)
2) WPE’s use of trademarks was much the same over the last decade including the years when Automattic had invested in WPE
3) There have been leaked documents going back to January this year demonstrating Automattic’s internal counsel talking about monetising the trademarks as an asset; the implication is that WPE is not an outlier, but merely the biggest target and that everyone else will get in line afterwards
4) All of the other big players in this market have been watching very carefully, they have all been following the same playbook as WPE had with respect to the WP trademarks, and they’ve all subtly amended the wording on their sites in much the same way.
5) Automattic internal documents also previously referred to GoDaddy as “an existential threat” suggesting they were very careful about who they picked as their first legal target, suspecting WPE would just roll over (after all, it’s “only” 8% of revenue, “they can afford it” style thinking, but that’s actually about 60% of their total profit because WP hosting isn’t nearly as lucrative as you’d think). Yes, they made $400 million revenue but that’s certainly not $400 million profit (though Matt definitely wants you to think that’s what happened)
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