TechTakes @awful.systems David Gerard @awful.systems 1 mo. ago

Hello Matt this is your lawer speaking. I am advising you today to please keep posting this shit

news.ycombinator.com /item

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If you modify a trademarked product and sell/distribute it, you can't use the trademarked name to describe it unless you get permission to do so.
- unsusprisingly, it turns out to be vastly more complicated than that
  
  Unless you refer to something other than violation of a trademark, I'm curious to know how it's more complicated than that?
  
  WP was explicitly not a trademarked term
  
  I haven't stumpled upon anything that complained about the use of the letters WP.
  
  What do you think the trademark claim against WPEngine is exactly?
  
  New blog smell, most likely
  
  Here you go
  
  https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-cease-and-desist.pdf
  
  https://automattic.com/2024/wp-engine-cease-and-desist-exhibits.pdf
  
  @smpl @db0 yeah, which has 0 legs to stand on. Hence the question about nominative use ...
  
  There does seem to be confusion among WPEngine customers from exhibit document. Whether they are in violation of the trademark or not is up to a judge to decide on. WPEngine have recently been doing a lot of changes on their website to clarify that they are not Wordpress. That does not automatically make them in violation, but it indicates that there were areas where they could have been more clear in their communication to customers.
  
  explain to me your understanding of nominative use, for a start
  
  (or, preferably, don't)
  
  That would be if WPEngine sold hosting of an unmodified Wordpress codebase.
  
  you're on matt's legal team right
  
  What a nice person you are.
  
  @smpl @dgerard well, you sure got the smarts
  
  what... what exactly do you think people like dreamhost and bluehost and such do? in your mind, do they have special dreampress and bluepress "vendored" versions of wordpress?
  
  good lord
  
  I'm only talking about trademark law. I'm not arguing what's morally right or wrong, that's a subjective perspective. I'm not able to tell if Dreamhost and Bluehost are violating the trademark, but from what I know they are generic webhosting companies and not as easily confused with Wordpress. In my personal opinion having had a quick look at Dreamhosts page about hosting Wordpress. It seems quite obvious that they only host the Wordpress software, with prominent phrases like "optimized for WordPress" and "Recommended by WordPress.org".
  
  photomatt? get the fuck off my instance photomatt
  
  wouldn't that just be funny as fuck
  
  i'm not saying he's been sockpuppeting on the orange site, i'm just asking
  
  user: metamichael created: 23 hours ago
  
  lul
  
  the only way to know for sure is to do a Photography Matthew photo critique thread and see if I get a nasty letter

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