P&G buys Swash.com after embarrassing legal approach.
Last month Procter & Gamble became one of the largest companies to be found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking after losing a domain dispute for Swash.com.
Among the company’s many sins in its UDRP filing was that it provided incorrect sales numbers for its ‘swash’ brand.
As it turns out, the company was looking to launch a brand new brand called Swash and wanted to get the domain name. It went about it the wrong way.
After losing the case, P&G paid up — literally.
Marchex, the company that owned the domain name, revealed today that it sold the domain name in March. It was the company’s biggest sale for the first quarter, too.
You can bet that Procter & Gamble paid a lot more for the domain after being found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking than if it would have taken the ethical road from the beginning.
An interesting tidbit: it looks like P&G used Marksmen to get the domain, as the whois changed to Marksmen briefly after the sale.
Nice to see a bully get caught red-handed and have to pay the price, in terms of both cash and reputation.
Good on Marchex for sticking to their guns and not folding under pressure. Let this be a lesson to all those who threaten people with lawyers when they are wholly in the wrong.
Pathetic that a company already so massive wouldn’t just go about the honest business way and make the current owner a decent offer instead of trying to pull all this crap to save a few bucks. Now excuse me while I spray some Febreeze to clear the air.
Notice that P&G still isn’t using the name for anything. One of the other TM owners should UDRP this away from them.