After more than two decades, the creator of Paint.NET finally owns the domain paint.net, and it's all thanks to a 'slam dunk case of trademark infringement'
After 22 years of attempts, Paint.NET creator Rick Brewster has finally acquired the domain paint.net. This acquisition follows a trademark infringement case against the previous domain owners who were misleading users. Brewster plans to migrate content and set up redirects to make the software available directly from the new domain.
- ▪Rick Brewster has been trying to obtain the domain paint.net since 2004.
- ▪The previous owners of the domain engaged in deceptive practices that led to a trademark infringement case.
- ▪Brewster has announced that he will soon migrate content to the new domain.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | PC Gamer |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcgamer.com/software/after-more-than-two-decades-the-creator-of-paint-net-finally-owns-the-domain-paint-net-and-its-all-thanks-to-a-slam-dunk-case-of-trademark-infringement/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 30 May 2026 15:44:29 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-30T15:59:38.738Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-30T15:59:38.738Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 1LAUtMsE6lWh |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Software After more than two decades, the creator of Paint.NET finally owns the domain paint.net, and it's all thanks to a 'slam dunk case of trademark infringement' News By Rick Lane published 30 May 2026 "I've been trying to get this domain for 22 years." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Viktor Antonov) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Paint.NET is one of the best free tools on the Internet, a Photoshop-like program that comes with much of the functionality of Adobe's software without the foreboding sense that you're selling your soul, while…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PC Gamer.
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