In 1994, Center City law firm Morgan Lewis bought MLB.com to direct to its company website (the firm’s full name is Morgan Lewis & Bockius).
In 1998, Major League Baseball, which happened to be a client of Morgan Lewis, launched its own web presence, relatively late, with majorleaguebaseball.com.
In September 2000, Morgan Lewis transferred MLB.com — by then already known as valuable for being just three letters — at no monetary cost, as was later reported.
Though the deal was written about then and has even attracted academic research, we couldn’t help but want to point out again how interesting it is that someone at a law firm jumped so early on the idea of a web presence. It’s a new take on the Philadelphia Lawyer.
Very little has been shared publicly about the negotiations and we won’t be changing that here now. Today Morgan Lewis sees the deal in the past and prefers not to comment, says spokeswoman Jennifer Costa.
Still it’s a novel story worth remembering, particularly considering other early domain purchases by other Philadelphia firms.
[Full Disclosure: Morgan Lewis has been a sponsor of Philly Tech Week, which Technically Philly organizes]
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