WP AND LEGAL STUFF

Template-based document automation is perfect for contracts, letters, and policies: fixed structure, variable details, merge and done.

Great documentary.

GravityMerge AI What if every repeatable document your business produces could be generated automatically, from a form, in seconds, as an editable Word file?

Settlement conference On 9 July, a settlement conference was held in the court hearing the WPEngine v Automattic proceedings (proceedings that are now so well-known that there’s no need to describe them).

When a leading proponent of open source says something about the GPL, people notice When one of the world’s leading proponents of open source software and the GPL makes pronouncements of what the GPL does and does not allow, many people will have a look a…

TL;DR The punchline of this post is that the operator(s) of WordPress.org may, through the “I am not affiliated…” checkbox, be breaching Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and that is something of which the board of Automattic ought to be…

What the… Just when the community thought things couldn’t get more disruptive – because they’re already mighty disruptive – they have.

The audio above is an interactive discussion of the post below, created by Google’s awesome new Notebook LM.

Introduction On 3 October 2024, an Associate General Counsel at Automattic published a useful post on “WordPress Trademarks: A Legal Perspective”.

Question from a reader I had decided to end my posts on the Automattic-WP Engine saga but, following changes by WP Engine to its website in response to the trademark infringement allegations against them, a reader has asked for my views on why it has done…

I can read I am not a US trademark lawyer.

A letter, of sorts Dear WP Engine I am a long-time customer.

The WordPress trademarks With all this talk of Automattic, WP Engine, and trademarks, I thought it might help to share a table I’ve created that lists the WordPress trademarks, when they were registered, the goods and services or classes of activity they…

Hats off Hats off to Matt.

The three concepts A member of the WordPress community made a comment to me which, to my mind, is completely apt: “Sadly, so much is mixing/equating the moral and legal arguments”.

In the latest post from MM/Automattic, WPE & Trademarks, Matt says this: “I’ve been writing and talking about WP Engine a lot in the last week, but I want to be crystal clear about the core issue at play.

The increasingly sad saga continues The latest and in my view completely inappropriate step that has been taken against WP Engine is to block it from being able to access WordPress.org for automatic updates.

The saga continues The saga does indeed continue.

The WordPress Trademark Policy Back in 2015, I described the WordPress Trademark Policy as it then stood in Using the WordPress trademarks for your business, product or service.

What a difference 24 hours makes Well, it’s amazing – but not surprising – what can happen in 24 hours.

Downward criticism of community members The WordPress community is no stranger to one of the project’s founders criticising those he considers to be behaving egregiously.

Like so many others, I’ve seen enough to be convinced that AI is here to stay, that it will get exponentially more powerful over time, and that the technology will transform many areas of work.

WordPress and Gravity Forms are both awesome.

WordPress is a fantastic content management system.

I suspect many of us, myself included, are now suffering from Black Friday to Cyber Monday fatigue.

“Make sure you get the legal stuff right with your online course.”

Let me introduce to Online Courses and Legal Stuff Over time I’ve written quite a bit about legal issues associated with the use of WordPress.

The question It’s been a while since I’ve dropped a post here.

The question A reader of WP and Legal Stuff asks: “There’s quite a big debate going on at the moment about Unsplash’s new license.

Introduction Jamie’s story https://wpandlegalstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/richard_best__Jamie_story.mp3 Hi.

WordPress, Wix and the GPL The Wix controversy, if I can call it that, has stirred up quite a bit of emotion in the WordPress and wider tech and open source communities.

The story Perhaps not surprisingly, Matt’s recent post “The Wix Mobile App, a WordPress Joint” caught my eye.

The backstory This isn’t a legal article.

The story I thought I’d introduce this post by telling a story.

With apologies for the radio silence for the last 5-6 months (for a while there life was just too hectic), I’m finally getting around to revving up WP and Legal Stuff again.

Background Back on 4 August of this year, I published a post called Theme and plugin shops – Discouraging public redistribution – User poll.

BobWP reader seeks step-by-step guide A while back I wrote a piece that first appeared on BobWP called Using Creative Commons images on your site with confidence (I republished it here too).

Finally… I’m pleased to be able to say that A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL is now out in the wild.

In my ebook (A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL) which will be out within the next 6-8 hours, I’ve included a one page summary of the GPL which I hope will make it easy for people to understand the core concepts of the GPL.

Context Last week I sent an email to subscribers on my email list.

Setting the scene In Legal checks when building a content-driven WordPress website, I discussed cookies — not the edible variety but the small text files that are stored on your computer or mobile device when you visit or undertake certain activity on cer…

Introduction For a while now I’ve wanted to address an issue that niggles away at me every time I see it.

Focus of this post As many in the WordPress community will know by now thanks to Jeff Chandler’s helpful post on the case, recently Chris Pearson was unsuccessful in his complaint against Automattic regarding its purchase of the thesis.com domain name.

If you’re a designer who source images for a client’s website, do you ensure you and your client have the right to use them?

Introduction As many will know, the WordPress Foundation has commenced court proceedings against Mr Yablon and PC-VIP, Inc in relation to the use of “WordPress” in “The WordPress Helpers” website and multiple domain names: thewordpresshelpers.com, theword…

Introduction A designer friend once let me in on a secret, a secret she described as “the designer’s little secret”.

Hi everyone.

Recently I received an email from a WordPress-related business telling me its terms of use had been updated.

If you’re wondering about the “special offer”, scream down to the bottom of the post.

WP and Legal Stuff has been live for three months.