(dr) Lamborghini
Lambage of Roadster.
In addition to being forced to give ownership to Lamborghini for free, American Richard Blair also had to compensate the luxury car brand and pay legal costs.
An American who bought the Lambo.com domain in hopes of selling it for tens of millions of dollars was forced by a court to hand it over to Lamborghini without receiving a penny. The decision ends a dispute that had been going on for years and began shortly after Arizona resident Richard Blair purchased the domain in 2018 for $10,000.
Blair’s strategy was clear: resell the domain for a huge profit. “Lambo” is widely recognized as an abbreviation for Lamborghini, which makes the name extremely valuable on the secondary domain market. Starting in 2020, Blair repeatedly announced the sale of the domain at increasingly higher prices.
Its initial price of $1.12 million quickly rose to $1.5 million, then to $3.3 million, $12 million, and finally to 75 million dollars in September 2023. Despite receiving offers from potential buyers, Blair rejected them all.
After securing dominance, Blair began introducing himself online as “Lambo”, claiming that the nickname was not inspired by the luxury car manufacturerbut rather by the word “lamb” (lamb). He redirected the domain to a personal page with a provocative message, stating his intention to “defend, defeat and humiliate” anyone who tried to take over his domain.
Lamborghini, as expected, reacted. In April 2022, the car manufacturer presented a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which governs international disputes involving domains that may infringe trademarks. In August 2022, the WIPO panel ruled that Blair acted in bad faith, concluding that he registered the domain to profit from Lamborghini’s established brand and reputation.
Instead of accepting the decision, Blair took legal action to overturn it. But the court upheld WIPO’s decision, concluding that Blair did not have a legitimate claim to dominance and only adopted the name “Lambo” after purchasing it. The court further noted that Blair never developed the website, made hostile statements towards Lamborghini and sought excessive profits directly linked to the company’s reputation, the report said.
As a result, Blair was forced to transfer the Lambo.com domain to Lamborghini. Not only did he lose the 10 thousand dollars he invested, he also had to pay legal costs, putting an end to what he expected to be a multimillion-dollar profit.
