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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

> Similarly, a business related to WordPress themes can describe itself as “XYZ Themes, the world’s best WordPress themes,” but cannot call itself “The WordPress Theme Portal.”

https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

How does "Most Trusted" differ from "best" which is allowed?

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It's the implication of a single type of entity having the official endorsement. If you change "The" to "A" in the second one it'd be fine again.

I think you're getting them mixed up.

WP Engine's slogan is: "Most Trusted WordPress Hosting and Beyond"

What the WordPress foundations trademark policy specifically allows is: "the world’s best WordPress themes"

I think that's not the difference, if I read it correctly the difference is being a WordPress Host, vs a hosting company offering wordpress hosting.

I think the big difference is also the marketing WP Engine is running full on The WordPress hosting.

> being a WordPress Host, vs a hosting company offering wordpress hosting

WPEngine is also offering Headless and WooCommerce as well as WordPress.

So your point makes absolutely no sense.

Automattic also owns WooCommerce.

Woocommerce is a Wordpress plugin.

But that besides the point.

The question is when is a company piggybacking on a brand.

Maybe Automattic is asking for too much, but it’s very clear wp engine strongly benefited from the brand, not only the software. Just Google them now, they are marketing full on with Wordpress.

I don’t see a way how they won’t win this in court.

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