- The owner of Lambo.com lost the lawsuit and the Lamborghini domain due to unfair conclusions
- He tried to claim that “Lambo” came from a pun on the name Lamb, not the automaker.
- The domain was purchased for $10,000 and put up for sale for $75 million.
History shows that if you buy the right domain name at the right time, you can potentially sell it for a decent 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 Lamborghini, so it has a certain image.
How Road and track He reportedly subsequently listed it for $1,129,298 in 2020, which would have been a nice salary, but then raised the asking price to $1.5 million. The price jumped to $3.3 million in early 2021. Later that year, the price reached $12 million. In 2022, the listing price rose to approximately $58 million. It was set at $75 million by 2023. 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 was a pun on Lamb and had absolutely nothing to do with the famous sports car manufacturer.
He directed Lambo.com to his personal website, where Road and track says he wrote: “I am LAMBO from LAMBO.com and I will defend, defeat and humiliate those who try to steal any of my domain names, including my nickname.”
Lamborghini, unimpressed by Blair's performance, took the issue to the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2022. He asked for the name to be reassigned under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, a framework used to resolve domain ownership disputes.
The commission decided that Blair had acted in bad faith and decided that the domain should go to the automaker. Blair took the dispute to federal court to try to change that result, but a U.S. district judge sided with Lamborghini and dismissed the case.
The court ruled that Blair had no rights to the name and only adopted the nickname after purchasing the domain. It said he did not develop the site, repeatedly attacked the company and tried to profit from its long-established reputation.
Surely there is something to earn on 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 undoubtedly inspired by these deals when he bought Lambo.com, but his attempt to get rich ended not only in the loss of a $10,000 domain name, but also in huge legal bills.
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