WP Engine asks court to stop Matt Mullenweg from blocking access to WordPress resources

WP Engine is asking a tribunal to enactment a halt to Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s nationalist run against the company. In a question for a preliminary injunction filed against Automattic and Mullenweg connected Friday, the third-party hosting level requests that the tribunal reconstruct its entree to WordPress resources and let it to regain power of its plugin that had been taken over.

In the filing, WP Engine claims it’s facing “multiple forms of contiguous irreparable harm” arsenic a effect of Mullenweg and Automattic’s actions, including “loss of customers, marketplace stock and goodwill.” The institution besides says it saw a 14 percent summation successful cancellation requests from September 26th to the 30th — conscionable days aft Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer” to the WordPress community.

WP Engine asks that Automattic reconstruct operations to the “status quo arsenic it existed prior” to the commencement of its dispute. “Developers are anxious and privation assurance they volition not beryllium adjacent to person different extortionate request from Mullenweg, go his adjacent people of atomic war, oregon adjacent to person their plug-ins expropriated,” the question reads. “Defendants’ ham-fisted takeover attempts are expanding the information hazard for everyone successful the WordPress community.”

The Verge reached retired to Automattic with a petition for remark but didn’t instantly perceive back.

Mullenweg has lone escalated his combat with WP Engine aft publically calling retired the work and claiming that it’s infringing connected WordPress trademarks. After Automattic and WP Engine exchanged cease and desist orders, WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg, accusing them of  “abuse of power, extortion, and greed.”