- Lambo.com owner loses lawsuit and domain to Lamborghini after bad faith findings
- He tried to claim Lambo came from a pun on Lamb, not the car maker
- The estate was purchased 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.
Arizona native Richard Blair thought he had found a promising digital asset when he purchased Lambo.com for $10,000 in 2018. Lambo is a well-known nickname for a Lamborghini and therefore has a certain cachet.
As Road and track reports, he then listed it at $1,129,298 in 2020, which would have been a tasty salary, but then increased the asking price to $1.5 million. In early 2021, the price jumped to $3.3 million. It reached $12 million later that year. In 2022, the listing has risen to around $58 million. By 2023, this amount was set at $75 million. Interested parties reportedly made offers but Blair refused them.
My name is Lambo!
In a quest for legitimacy, after purchasing the domain, Blair began calling himself “Lambo” online. He said it came from a pun on Lamb and had absolutely nothing to do with the famous sports car maker.
He directed Lambo.com to a personal site where Road and track said he posted: “I AM LAMBO of LAMBO.com and I will defend, defeat and humiliate those who attempt to steal any of my domain name marks, including my nickname. »
Lamborghini, unimpressed with Blair’s activities, took the matter to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Center in 2022. It requested that the name be reassigned under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, the framework used to handle disputes over domain ownership.
The panel decided that Blair was acting in bad faith and ruled that the estate should revert to the automaker. Blair took the dispute to federal court to try to overturn that decision, but a U.S. district judge sided with Lamborghini and threw out the case.
The court ruled that Blair had no rights to the name and only adopted the nickname after purchasing the domain. He said he did not develop the site, attacked the company multiple times and tried to take advantage of its established reputation.
There is definitely money to be made 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 have also sold for eight figures.
Richard Blair was undoubtedly inspired by these deals when he purchased Lambo.com, but his attempt to get rich ended not only in losing the $10,000 domain, but also in a hefty legal bill.
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