Former direct employee of Matt Mullenweg, Samuel Sidler, wrote an interesting post about the unclear ownership of the Openverse, which is a WordPress project. One piece of the story ties into something we have looked at. The extent that the WordPress Foundation is intertwined with Automattic, especially with trademark applications. He wrote this:

The application of the wordmark was made by the WordPress Foundation, with Mullenweg signing the paperwork with a title of “CEO.”[9] Meanwhile, on the trademark application for the logo, Mullenweg signed the paperwork with a title of “Founder.” On November 10, 2022, Chloe Bringmann—with a title of “Chief of Staff”—signed a “statement of use” for the logo, noting first use was July 20, 2021. Bringmann signed a “statement of use” for the wordmark on May 23, 2023, noting first use was April 27, 2021.

The post didn’t link to the relevant documents with those positions mentioned. Here is the document listing Matt Mullenweg as CEO, which is dated July 6, 2021. Here is the document listing Matt Mullenweg as Founder, which is dated August 21, 2021. Here is the document listing Chloe Bringmann as Chief of Staff.

As we noted in a previous post, it isn’t clear what Chloe Bringmann was the Chief of Staff of:

Looking at the application for those trademarks shows no mention of Automattic, but the applications were signed by someone named Chloe Bringmann, who listed their position as Chief of Staff. There was someone who worked for Automattic until very recently with that name. A former Automattic employee has stated that they were the Chief of Staff of Automattic. Just to add more confusion to the whole thing, they were once mentioned on WordPress news blog as Chief of Staff with no entity defined, which would reasonably suggest they were in that role at WordPress.

That seems like an important detail as the trademark applications mentioned in the quoted text appear to be related to Automattic’s/Matt Mulleweng’s attempt to extract money from WP Engine and other competitors of them. Matt Mullenweg also claimed he didn’t know anything about that:

In a conversation with TechCrunch last month, Mullenweg claimed he didn’t know who filed these on behalf of the Foundation, or why. He said that he doesn’t know about day-to-day operations of the Foundation and volunteers are the ones who handle it.

The footnote for the quote from Samuel Slider’s post reads, “I did not know Mullenweg was CEO of the WordPress Foundation at any point in the past.” Based on the tax returns, he wasn’t the CEO of that. In the tax return for relevant year, 2021, his title is “director.” That is true of the year before and after that as well. He held that title going back to 2015 tax return. In 2014 tax return, his title was “board of director.” Prior to that, his titles were “president” and “treasurer.” In line with that, when he signed for a trademark application at the end of 2009, he signed as “president”

He is the CEO of Automattic. He isn’t, as far as we are aware, the CEO of WordPress. His main title appears to be project lead. So it gives the appearance that he was signing the WordPress Foundation document in his capacity as the CEO of Automattic. We are not lawyers, so we can’t speak to if that has any legal relevance. In his defense, slightly, just over a month later, he signed a document with is his position as founder, which isn’t actually a role with the foundation. So he doesn’t appear to be paying much attention to this detail. Nor do the lawyers involved apparently.

What this also suggests is that he is familiar with the process that the WordPress Foundation uses to file for trademarks and was directly involved in that at least as of three years ago. While more recently claiming a lack of awareness of that sort of thing.