I was curious what this meant, so I looked into it. They asked Automatic.css to ...

hermitcrab · 2026-09-09T22:16:40

The article linked ( https://www.404media.co/automattic-automatic-trademark-matt-... ) is behind a paywall. But reading https://www.searchenginejournal.com/automattic-disputes-use-... it sounds like the claim 'Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic"' might not be accurate.

notahacker · 2026-09-09T23:38:30

Yeah, regardless of other aspects of Automattic's behaviour, flagging that an identically-pronounced single letter variation of their registered company name might be a confusingly similar brand for a third party commercial service specifically designed to customise Automattic's product to adopt seems to be at the reasonable end of trademark disputes...

BeetleB · 2026-09-09T22:29:34

[flagged]

Crontab · 2026-09-10T00:56:59

Hard disagree. 404 has been awesome since being founded.

baublet · 2026-09-09T23:16:36

FUD. Don’t spread nonsense. They’re as rigorous as any other tech journo, you just have an axe to grind.

BeetleB · 2026-09-09T23:22:17

I don't see how this is FUD. Both a sibling comment and my parent pointed out that there's more to the story than simply "claiming the word automatic." They provided extra context (which the article didn't).

I am merely relating my experience that stuff like this is common with 404 Media. They'll omit nuances - whether intentionally or just being shoddy.

bewuethr · 2026-09-09T23:36:21

The article links to an entire separate article about automatic.css.