WP Engine vs Automattic in 2026: The September Ruling Explained for Site Owners

Last updated 14 October 2026. We read the court orders themselves for this, not just the coverage. Links to each one are below.

Two years in, the fight between WP Engine and Automattic is still going, and September 2026 was a big month for it. A judge brought back WP Engine’s antitrust claims, which she had thrown out a year earlier. Separately, Automattic’s own board put Matt Mullenweg on leave, and 33 hours later he was back in charge.

Most coverage of this is written for people who’ve followed every twist. This one isn’t. If you run a WordPress site and just want to know what happened and whether it affects you, read on.

Short version: nothing changes for your site today. The case is heading for a trial scheduled for 19 October 2027. Until then, a court order from December 2024 keeps WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org in place.

Who’s who

• WordPress is the free, open-source software. Anyone can use it.
• WordPress.org is the website where WordPress, plugins and themes are downloaded and updated from. According to the court’s own summary, Matt Mullenweg is the individual owner of the wordpress.org domain and manages the site. It isn’t run by Automattic or by the Foundation.
• Automattic is Mullenweg’s company. It owns WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack and more. Mullenweg is its CEO.
• The WordPress Foundation is a nonprofit that owns the WordPress trademarks. Automattic gave the marks to the Foundation years ago and kept a licence to use them commercially.
• WP Engine is a large WordPress hosting company, and owner of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. It isn’t owned by Automattic.

How it started (2024)

What the December 2024 injunction did

A preliminary injunction is a temporary order that keeps things a certain way until the case is decided. In this one (read the order), Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín told Automattic and Mullenweg, within 72 hours, to:

• restore WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org as it was on 20 September 2024,
• remove the “not affiliated with WP Engine” checkbox from the login page,
• give WP Engine back control of the ACF listing,
• take down a list of WP Engine customers they had published.

The order also says it stays in force until judgment after trial. That’s why, if you host with WP Engine, updates have worked normally ever since.

What the 24 September 2026 ruling actually says

This is the part most people are confused about. A judge ruling on a “motion to dismiss” isn’t deciding who’s right. She’s deciding whether a claim is allowed to go forward at all, assuming everything the plaintiff says is true. So nothing below means anyone has been found guilty of anything. It means these claims get to be argued.

Here’s what the 17-page order decided:

1. WP Engine’s antitrust claims are back

“Antitrust” is the law against using a dominant position to squeeze competitors. WP Engine has four antitrust claims: monopolization, attempted monopolization, and two “tying” claims (one under federal law, one under California law).

The same judge had dismissed these in September 2025. This time she let them proceed, and said so plainly in a footnote: the court “departs from its prior order, now finding WPEngine’s antitrust claims viable.”

Why the change? In August 2026 the Ninth Circuit appeals court decided a different case (Surgical Instrument Service Co. v. Intuitive Surgical). It said that if a company has market power in the main market, a plaintiff doesn’t have to prove a list of extra conditions about the smaller “aftermarket”. The judge found WP Engine had plausibly alleged that power, so those extra conditions no longer blocked the claims.

On market power, the order points to WP Engine’s allegation that Automattic and Mullenweg could “extract millions of dollars from their competitors for WordPress access that used to be free”. It says that’s enough to count as raising prices, “at the pleading stage”. WP Engine alleges multi-million-dollar deals were sought with at least 11 competitors. Again, these are WP Engine’s allegations, which the court has to accept as true for now.

2. The login checkbox is now a legal issue

“Tying” normally means forcing you to buy product B if you want product A. A “negative tie” is the reverse: you only get product A if you promise not to use a competitor. The judge found WP Engine had plausibly pleaded one, pointing to the allegation that access to WordPress.org was conditioned on users checking “I am not affiliated with WPEngine in any way.”

3. The “extortion” claim is gone for good

WP Engine also claimed the licence-fee demand broke an anti-extortion part of a computer crime law (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). The judge dismissed this without leave to amend, which means WP Engine can’t try again. Her reasoning: WP Engine had no pre-existing right to free access to WordPress.org or the trademarks “in perpetuity”, and asking to be paid for something with real value isn’t extortion. Hard bargaining, the order says, isn’t extortion either.

4. Automattic’s trademark counterclaims mostly survive

Automattic, Mullenweg, the WordPress Foundation and WooCommerce had counter-sued in October 2025, saying WP Engine misused the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. WP Engine asked the court to throw those out. Mostly, it didn’t. Two exceptions:

• A false-advertising piece (about WP Engine’s “Five for the Future” pledge) was dismissed, but Automattic can rewrite it and try again.
• The core trademark claims were dismissed to the extent Automattic and Mullenweg bring them in their own name, because, in the court’s words, they “are neither owners nor registrants of the marks at issue”. The WordPress Foundation, which owns the marks, keeps those claims.

Some headlines summed up that last point as “Automattic doesn’t own the WordPress trademark”. That’s accurate as far as it goes, but it’s not new. The Foundation has owned the marks all along. What the ruling does is stop Automattic and Mullenweg suing over them personally.

Meanwhile, at Automattic: 33 hours

This is separate from the lawsuit, but it happened the same month and got mixed up with it in a lot of coverage. Here’s what’s confirmed and what’s only reported, based on TechCrunch’s reporting:

• Confirmed by Automattic: on 9 September the board voted to put Mullenweg on paid leave, with CFO Mark Davies as interim CEO. On 12 September Automattic said Mullenweg “is the chairman and CEO of Automattic, with full support of the board.” It later said he “was away for only 33 hours and 20 minutes.”
• Confirmed by TechCrunch: board member Ann Dunwoody was removed, and Sue Decker’s LinkedIn shows her board role ending in September 2026.
• Reported from sources only: that Toni Schneider also left the board and that the CFO was let go.
• Unknown: why the board voted the way it did. Automattic hasn’t said, and TechCrunch has not linked the vote to the lawsuit.

What’s next in the case

The court has set trial for 19 October 2027. Before that, both sides go through expert depositions and summary judgment motions, where either side can ask the judge to decide some claims without a trial.

One more twist from the docket: Automattic changed law firms in September. In a 13 October filing, it says its previous firm, Gibson Dunn, withdrew because of a conflict of interest, and that new counsel was hired on 17 September. It asked for two more months for expert discovery. WP Engine wouldn’t agree. The judge’s stamp on the filing reads “denied”, so for now the schedule stays as it was.

Does any of this affect my WordPress site?

Honestly, not right now.

• Self-hosted WordPress on any host: nothing changes. WordPress is still free and open source under the GPL, and no ruling has touched that.
• Hosted at WP Engine: the December 2024 injunction keeps WordPress.org access working until the case is over.
• Using ACF: WP Engine got the ACF listing back under the injunction. If your site was switched to Secure Custom Fields back in 2024, check which one you have under Plugins.
• Plugin and theme developers: this is where it gets interesting long term. The antitrust claims are about whether access to WordPress.org can be tied to business terms. However it ends, the result will shape how much control one person has over the directory most of us ship through.

If you sell or maintain plugins, it’s a good reason not to depend on a single distribution channel. We wrote about how the directory itself works in how WordPress plugin search ranks results and looked at it in numbers in our 2026 plugin directory census.

Sources

All court documents are from the public docket of WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc., N.D. Cal. case 4:24-cv-06917, via CourtListener: Dkt. 64 (preliminary injunction, 10 Dec 2024), Dkt. 169 (order on motion to dismiss, 12 Sep 2025), Dkt. 410 (order on motions to dismiss, 24 Sep 2026), Dkt. 433 (motion to modify schedule, 13 Oct 2026). Automattic board details are from TechCrunch’s reporting of 12 and 14 September 2026. We aren’t lawyers, and this isn’t legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

Did WP Engine win its antitrust case against Automattic?

No, not yet. On 24 September 2026 the judge only ruled that WP Engine’s antitrust claims are allowed to go forward. Nobody has won or lost them. The trial is scheduled for 19 October 2027.

Does Automattic own the WordPress trademark?

No. The WordPress Foundation owns the WordPress trademarks. The September 2026 order said Automattic and Mullenweg are neither owners nor registrants of the marks, so they can’t bring those trademark claims in their own name, but the Foundation can.

Can WP Engine customers still update their plugins?

Yes. A preliminary injunction from December 2024 ordered WordPress.org access for WP Engine restored, and it stays in force until judgment after the trial.