WP Engine and Automattic filed more than 20 discovery letters and motions with the U.S. District Court last week, each accusing the other of withholding evidence, obstructing the discovery process, and running out the clock.
The filings flooded the docket between May 20 and 22, a week after fact discovery closed in WP Engine’s lawsuit on May 14. They span at least six separate disputes covering Automattic CEO and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s deposition, the ACF plugin fork, WP Engine’s financial condition, trademark licensing, internal branding decisions, and the governance and finances of the WordPress Foundation.
Nearly every letter is accompanied by at least one motion to seal — a request to make certain court records unavailable to the public — so much of the substance of the claims is hidden behind redactions.
The filings mark the biggest single batch of discovery disputes since WP Engine filed its lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg in October 2024, and the court is moving quickly to deal with them. Magistrate Judge Ajay Krishnan, who is overseeing the discovery process, has set hearings for May 27 and 29, and indicated he will decide some of the disputes on the written submissions alone.
Deleted ACF user data and a 48-hour trail
The most substantive filing is a joint letter about Advanced Custom Fields-related documents, stemming from the April 10 deposition of Iain Poulson, WP Engine’s Principal Product Manager for the ACF plugin.
Automattic argues that Poulson confirmed under oath that several categories of business records exist in WP Engine’s systems — a monthly dashboard tracking ACF performance, a refund-reasons log, business intelligence reports, Google Analytics and Search Console data, annual user survey results, brand studies measuring reputational harm, and a Google Document underlying a deposition exhibit — but that WP Engine either never produced them or produced them incomplete and late.
Automattic says some documents arrived at 11:25pm on May 14, during the final hour before fact discovery closed and after every witness had already been deposed.
WP Engine responded that the documents had either been produced, were privileged, or didn’t exist. But WP Engine also went on the offense, alleging that wordpress.org’s own systems had recorded identifying information about ACF plugin users — including IP addresses, site URLs, and hostnames — through callbacks, API requests, and “phone home” status checks. WP Engine argued that this data was stored on wordpress.org’s servers and then deleted on a rolling 48-hour cycle instead of being preserved.
The timing is central to WP Engine’s claims. ACF was forked on October 12, 2024, 10 days after WP Engine filed its lawsuit. That means user-identification data was being recorded and destroyed after Automattic’s obligations to preserve data in the case had already taken effect.
The accusation comes after Magistrate Judge Krishnan recently ordered Mullenweg to provide a sworn declaration about document preservation after describing Automattic’s efforts as “concerning.”
WP Engine noted one more detail in its supporting declaration. At 11:34pm on May 21, the night before the joint letter was filed, Automattic’s lawyers emailed a proposed edit stating that the data was gone “in the ordinary course, long before WP Engine filed this lawsuit.” WP Engine responded before the midnight filing deadline, but Automattic insisted on removing the statement. In her declaration, Quinn Emanuel attorney Kaitlin Koehane described it as an “admission” that Automattic sought to retract.
Automattic is separately seeking to seal the full deposition transcript of Barry Abrahamson, the company’s Chief Systems Wrangler, who testified about wordpress.org’s plugin data architecture, arguing his testimony includes proprietary business information whose disclosure would cause competitive harm.
Twenty-one hours with Mullenweg and a request for more
According to the filings, Mullenweg sat for three days of deposition at Quinn Emanuel’s San Francisco offices from May 12 to 14. He answered more than 1,300 questions across 21 hours on the record, was examined by three attorneys, and was shown more than 80 exhibits. He had been designated as the person most knowledgeable on 46 topics — 29 for Automattic and 17 for WooCommerce — covering nearly all of WP Engine’s claims in the case.
WP Engine had requested five days of deposition with Mullenweg. When that request was refused, it asked for four, was turned down again, and ultimately agreed to three, while reserving the right to seek more time from the court.
In a joint letter, WP Engine argued the three days were “woefully insufficient due to Mullenweg’s unpreparedness, non-responsiveness, evasive testimony, and otherwise dilatory behavior.” Its portion of the letter described “repeated and theatrical delays,” “non-responsive narratives,” and “arguing with questions,” and listed topics it said it couldn’t adequately cover, including Automattic’s October 2024 “Alignment Offer” to employees, the ACF fork and customer confusion, the “maker/taker” rhetoric, and the basis for public statements describing WP Engine as a “bastardized simulacra,” a “parasitic” entity, and a provider of “degraded product quality.”
WP Engine wants five more hours and a different witness for topics where it says Mullenweg wasn’t adequately prepared.
In its portion of the joint letter, Automattic pushed back hard, arguing that WP Engine had already received triple the standard seven-hour deposition limit under the federal rules and was asking for a do-over. They said WP Engine’s legal team had asked open-ended questions and then complained about getting detailed answers. Automattic also argued that WP Engine didn’t raise objections to allegedly non-responsive testimony during the deposition itself — a procedural requirement that, if missed, can constitute a waiver.
Automattic also accused WP Engine’s legal team of making false accusations about Mullenweg destroying evidence of his personal finances and of relying on a fabricated quotation in an earlier court filing that was never corrected.
Nearly all of Mullenweg’s deposition testimony cited by both sides is sealed. Automattic has designated the transcript as “Highly Confidential — Attorneys’ Eyes Only.” WP Engine hasn’t conceded the seal. In a separate motion, it expressly reserved the right to challenge it.
Was WP Engine already in trouble?
Automattic is also challenging WP Engine’s damages case, filing a joint letter with the court seeking financial documents from the files of CEO Heather Brunner and VP of Corporate Development Victor Yuan.
Automattic’s argument is a direct counter to WP Engine’s claim that Automattic and Mullenweg’s actions destroyed what had otherwise been a healthy business. Automattic’s portion of the letter, heavily redacted throughout, argues the company was already in decline before any of it happened.
Large sections describing WP Engine’s financial trajectory are blacked out. But the visible portions reference missed financial targets and a period in which no bonuses were paid in 2023. Automattic also highlights an outside consulting engagement WP Engine commissioned to diagnose why it was losing customers and revenue momentum.
According to Automattic, the consultant’s report identified WP Engine as the dominant competitor in the managed WordPress market and tied the company’s brand value to being “synonymous with WordPress.”
Automattic also took aim at the volume of WP Engine’s financial production, arguing in the filing that Brunner had produced just one email to her controlling investor Silver Lake in the entire period between 2023 and August 2024. Only two of the 72 monthly financial reporting packages WP Engine sent to Silver Lake between 2020 and 2025 had been produced.
In its portion of the joint letter, WP Engine called the motion “a sham,” arguing that both sides had negotiated a binding reciprocal financial discovery agreement in March 2026 covering five specific document categories. WP Engine argued that Automattic was trying to reopen disputes it had already settled. WP Engine said it had produced over 630,000 pages total, including more than 13,000 pages of financial records.
A trademark strategy two months before WordCamp US
Two filings shed new light on how both sides were positioning themselves in the months before the public conflict began.
In another filing, Automattic is seeking to uphold its clawback of a Slack exchange from July 24, 2024 — roughly two months before Mullenweg’s keynote address at WordCamp US — in an internal channel Mullenweg created called “trademark-wpe-privileged.” The exchange shows Mullenweg, Chief Financial Officer Mark Davies, and several business leads discussing a trademark enforcement strategy presentation deck. The deck went through at least 21 versions.
Of the 147 messages posted in the channel, Automattic is asserting attorney-client privilege over 135.
The document surfaced by accident during Davies’s deposition on April 23, when Automattic’s legal team spotted the names of in-house lawyers on a partially redacted document that had been used as a deposition exhibit, took a break, and clawed it back on the spot.
A separate privilege fight involves a WP Engine business strategy deck from August 2, 2024, in which Yuan evaluated the benefits of paying Automattic for a trademark license. A single redacted sentence is at issue. Automattic argues the sentence shows WP Engine believed a license had value, contradicting its claims that it never needed one to use the WordPress and WooCommerce marks. WP Engine claims the sentence contains privileged legal analysis from its general counsel. Both sides agreed WP Engine could submit the unredacted version for the court to review privately if needed.
Four platforms, a flight to Madrid, and a refused second day
In another letter, Automattic is asking the court to order WP Engine to search four internal platforms it never disclosed during discovery — Asana, Jira, Figma, and Miro — for branding and marketing records tied to the 2024 brand refresh, when WP Engine adopted the tagline “we power the freedom to create on WordPress.”
The deposition of WP Engine’s Head of Brand, Regina Yuan, is itself a point of contention. According to Automattic’s filing, it spent six months and at least nine requests trying to schedule the deposition before WP Engine offered a single window in Madrid, where Yuan was temporarily based. Members of Automattic’s legal team flew to Madrid and deposed her for one day, but WP Engine then refused to make Yuan available for a second day.
Yuan confirmed in her testimony that the platforms in question were where design and project work took place.
WP Engine fired back with evidence that Automattic uses the same four platforms and has refused to search them. WP Engine argued that any order compelling platform searches should apply to both sides, and specifically flagged Automattic’s Jira and Asana records as potentially relevant to the ACF fork and customer migration.
Unanswered questions and the Foundation’s missing records
Two additional letters to the court seek to compel answers to interrogatories, which are written questions that each side in a lawsuit can require the other to answer under oath.
WP Engine says Automattic, Mullenweg, WooCommerce, and the WordPress Foundation have refused to provide substantive responses on several fronts. The disputed questions cover the factual basis for claiming the WordPress and WooCommerce marks are famous, every instance of actual consumer confusion, an itemized damages calculation, and when WP Engine’s alleged trademark misuse began.
A further question asks for the full history of when Mullenweg became aware of WP Engine’s use of the WordPress and WooCommerce marks. That goes to WP Engine’s laches defense, the argument that the other side waited too long to enforce its trademark rights. Automattic, the WordPress Foundation, and WooCommerce all answered the equivalent question. Mullenweg alone refused.
In a separate letter, WP Engine is seeking Foundation financial statements from before 2022 and after 2024. WP Engine says that period covers the 2010 trademark transfer to the Foundation and the simultaneous license-back to Automattic, an arrangement it has alleged was designed to obscure who actually controls the marks.
Harmony Romo, who testified on the Foundation’s behalf, confirmed at deposition that the records exist. Automattic responded that an outside auditing firm wasn’t engaged until after the agreed production cutoff, and that related communications were privileged.
WP Engine also flagged a missing Google Document related to pricing WordPress trademarks for hosting companies. According to its filing, the document contained a comment and a response from Mullenweg. WP Engine says it goes directly to its claim that Automattic used the marks as leverage to extract licensing fees from hosts. Automattic’s lawyers said versions of the document had already been produced, but WP Engine’s declaration says none of those versions contain Mullenweg’s response.
WP Engine also asked Mullenweg to admit or deny whether he disclosed the exclusive license agreement between the WordPress Foundation and Automattic in the Foundation’s tax filings with the state of California. Hours before the discovery deadline, Mullenweg amended his response to say he could not confirm or deny. WP Engine argued a “reasonable inquiry” would have taken a few clicks, since the filings are public records on the California Department of Justice website.
In an interrogatory response included in one of the filings, Automattic’s legal team wrote that no documents exist showing Automattic derives financial benefit from wordpress.org because “wordpress.org does not operate for Automattic’s financial benefit.”
WP Engine is separately seeking the data behind a March 2026 post by Mullenweg on X claiming new WordPress sites are being created “every second, 24/7.” WP Engine argues that statement is itself evidence that Mullenweg has continuous, real-time access to wordpress.org analytics — data it says is relevant to its claims about Automattic’s market power.
Hearings on the discovery disputes are scheduled for May 27 and 29, and Judge Krishnan will decide some of the disputes on written submissions alone. A separate hearing on Automattic’s motion to dismiss WP Engine’s antitrust claims is scheduled for June 4. The case is set for a jury trial in September 2027.
Disclosure: WP Engine and Automattic-owned Pressable are sponsors of The Repository.
Updated, 26 May, 226: Updated hearing dates.