Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

JDate Buys JSwipe — Ends Spat Over Letter ‘J’

Just months after a public battle over the trademark of the letter “J,” Jewish dating services JDate and JSwipe have kissed and coupled up.

Spark Networks, owner of JDate and several other non-Jewish dating sites, announced on Wednesday that it had bought Smooch Labs, the company behind mobile dating app JSwipe. The purchase price will be announced when Spark Networks releases its fourth quarter finances.

JDate, an older and larger website, sued fledging competitor JSwipe in November 2014. In the lawsuit, JDate claimed that it had a trademark on the letter “J” among dating sites and a patent on technology that helps users find matches. JSwipe’s founder David Yarus launched an unsuccessful Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign to try to raise money to pay for over $300,000 in legal fees.

Yarus’ tune had changed in the Spark Networks news release announcing the sale.

“In talking with the new management team at Spark it was clear that we share the same mission and our combined know-how will help us better serve the Jewish community into the future,” he said. “Everyone at Smooch Labs is excited to join the Spark team.”

The news release hinted that Spark Networks will add paid premium services to the JSwipe app, which is currently free.

JDate boasts over 750,000 users, while the news release hints that JSwipe’s user base has surpassed 450,000.

JSwipe is modeled on the dating app Tinder, which is popular among millennials and was one of the first so-called “swiping apps,” which allow users to use a quick swipe motion to choose between photos of users.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.