- Lambo.com owner loses lawsuit & domain to Lamborghini after bad faith findings
- He tried to claim Lambo came from a word play on Lamb, not the car maker
- Domain was bought for $10,000 and offered for sale for up to $75 million
History shows that if you buy the right domain name at the right time, you could potentially sell it for a tidy profit- but, it turns out it’s not without risk.
Richard Blair, from Arizona, thought he’d found a promising digital asset when he bought Lambo.com for $10,000 in 2018. Lambo is a well known nickname for a Lamborghini and so has a certain cachet.
As Road & Track reports, he subsequently listed it for $1,129,298 in 2020, which would have been a tasty payday, but then raised the asking price to $1.5 million. Early in 2021 the price jumped to $3.3 million. It reached $12 million later that year. In 2022 the listing climbed to roughly $58 million. By 2023 it was set at $75 million. Interested parties reportedly made offers but Blair turned them down.
I’m Lambo!
In a bid for legitimacy, after buying the domain Blair started calling himself “Lambo” online. He said it came from a word play on Lamb and had absolutely nothing to do with the well known sports car maker.
He directed Lambo.com to a personal site where Road & Track says he posted, “I AM LAMBO of LAMBO.com and I will defend, defeat and humiliate those endeavoring to steal any of my domain name brands including my moniker.”
Lamborghini, unimpressed with Blair’s activities, brought the issue to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Center in 2022. It asked for the name to be reassigned under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, the framework used to handle disputes over domain ownership.
The panel decided Blair was acting in bad faith and decided the domain should go to the automaker. Blair took the dispute to federal court to try to reverse that outcome, but a United States district judge backed Lamborghini and dismissed the case.
The court ruled that Blair lacked any right to the name and had only adopted the moniker after buying the domain. It said he didn’t develop the site, had attacked the company on more than one occasion, and tried to profit from its established reputation.
There is certainly money to be made in buying and selling domains. Voice.com sold for $30 million in 2019, 360.com sold for $17 million in 2015 and Chat.com sold for $15.5 million in 2023. NFTs.com, Rocket.com, Sex.com, and Icon.com also sold for eight figures.
Richard Blair was no doubt inspired by these deals when he bought Lambo.com, but his attempt to strike it rich ended not only with the loss of the $10,000 domain but also a hefty legal bill.
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waynewilliams@onmail.com (Wayne Williams)
