- Lambo.com owner loses lawsuit and domain to Lamborghini after bad faith findings
- He tried to claim that Lambo came from a pun on Lamb, not the automaker
- The domain 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 can potentially sell it for a nice profit – but it turns out it’s not without risk.
Richard Blair of Arizona thought he had 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 it also has a certain cachet.
Seam 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. In early 2021, the price increased to $3.3 million. It reached $12 million later that year. By 2022, the listing rose to around $58 million. By 2023, it was set at $75 million. Interested parties reportedly made offers, but Blair rejected them.
I’m Lambo!
In a bid 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 well-known sports car manufacturer.
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 who seek to steal any of my domain names, including my name.”
Lamborghini, unimpressed by Blair’s activities, took the matter to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Mediation Center in 2022. It asked to have the name redistributed under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, the framework used to handle domain ownership disputes.
The panel decided that Blair was acting in bad faith and ruled that the domain should go to the automaker. Blair took the dispute to federal court to try to overturn that result, but a US district judge sided with Lamborghini and dismissed the case.
The court ruled that Blair lacked any right to the name and had only adopted the name after purchasing the domain. It said he did not develop the site, had attacked the company on more than one occasion and sought to take advantage of its established reputation.
There is definitely money to be made from 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 up not only in the loss of the $10,000 domain but also in a huge legal bill.
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