WIPO D2025-2121 · decided 16 July 2025
JetBrains s.r.o. v. Shengyuan Qiu
The parties
- Complainant
- JetBrains s.r.o.
- Respondent
- Shengyuan Qiu
What did the panel find on each element?
| Policy paragraph | Finding |
|---|---|
| 4(a)(i) Identical or confusingly similar | The panel found pycharm.com identical to the PYCHARM trademark, which JetBrains registered in the United States on June 26, 2012, and disregarded the .com ending. |
| 4(a)(ii) No rights or legitimate interests | The panel found no legitimate interest. The respondent's only evidence of a planned pinyin education platform was a Word document created on June 29, 2025, the day the response was filed. |
| 4(a)(iii) Registered and used in bad faith | The panel found bad faith under paragraph 4(b)(iv) of the Policy, because the pay-per-click links traded on confusion with PYCHARM, even on the respondent's claimed acquisition date of July 2013. |
Why does PyCharm matter for a complaint today?
JetBrains s.r.o., the Czech software company, obtained transfer of pycharm.com even though the respondent filed a full response and said it had owned the domain since July 2013. The panel, Nick J. Gardner, did not need to settle when the respondent acquired it. Even on the respondent's own date, JetBrains had launched PyCharm in 2010 and registered PYCHARM in the United States in 2012. The panel called the word unusual and distinctive, and found no evidence that anyone else uses it. For a business owner, the useful point is about parked pages. The domain showed only pay-per-click links to Python software sites. The panel held that this is bad faith use, and that it makes no difference that the links were generated automatically. Section 3.5 of the WIPO Overview 3.1 takes the same line, although it now calls those facts a relevant consideration. The second point is evidence. The respondent set out a project timeline running from 2013 to 2025 but produced no document from that period. The limit: the panel relied on PYCHARM being an unusual coined word. A trademark that is also a dictionary word would face a harder argument against a parked .com.
What does the WIPO Overview 3.1 say?
The WIPO Overview 3.1 summarises how WIPO panels decide each issue. These sections cover the same point of law.
- Section 2.9: Do "parked" pages comprising pay-per-click links support respondent rights or legitimate interests?
- Section 3.5: Can third-party generated material "automatically" appearing on the website associated with a domain name form a basis for finding bad faith?
- Section 2.2: What qualifies as prior use, or demonstrable preparations to use the domain name, in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services?
Who decided the case?
A single panelist, Nick J. Gardner, decided the case on 16 July 2025.
Read the decision
The full text is published by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. We summarise it here; the decision itself is the authority.
Summarised by Gergana Dimitrova, who worked at the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center from 2018 to 2021 and sits as a domain name panelist at the Czech Arbitration Court. Checked against the published decision on 23 October 2026. Full background.
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