An Arizona man looking for a huge payday for his ‘Lambo.com’ domain wound up left with nothing but legal fees and a loss of his initial investment, after a United States district court ruled in favor of Lamborghini and awarded the carmaker the domain name without having to pay a dime.
It all started in February 2018, according to court documents, when Richard Blair purchased the "Lambo.com" domain for $10,000. In April 2022, Lamborghini filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center seeking a transfer of domain name under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). In August of that year, the panel determined that Blair was acting in bad faith and ordered the domain be transferred to Lamborghini. Blair filed a lawsuit in an attempt to reverse this decision.
Since he purchased the Lambo.com domain, Blair listed it for sale several times, as the court filings reveal. It was first listed on August 6, 2020, for $1,129,298. On December 23, 2020, the price increased to $1.5 million. On January 27, 2021, the price was $3.3 million. That rose to $12 million on September 23, 2021. On August 11, 2022, the price shot up to 50 million euros (about $58 million). On September 7, 2023, the asking price hit $75 million. Prospective buyers reportedly made offers to Blair for the domain, but he refused them all.
After he purchased the domain in 2018, Blair began to refer to himself as “Lambo” online, and also reportedly made the rather strange claim that he was drawn to the name Lambo not because of the car company, but as a play on the word “Lamb.” Court documents revea Blair also redirected the Lambo.com site to another website featuring a blog post he wrote that said, in part, “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.”
Ultimately, the court decided that Blair had no legal rights to the Lambo name, and only began to refer to himself that way after he bought the domain; the ruling states that he made no attempt to develop the website, he disparaged Lamborghini, and he was trying to profit from the goodwill of the automaker. As such, his lawsuit was dismissed, and Lamborghini now has the contested domain.