Facepalm: There have been plenty of instances over the decades of people making small fortunes by selling domain names, but the practice isn't risk free. A man who bought Lambo.com hoped to get $75 million for the name. Unfortunately, a court made him turn it over to Lamborghini for nothing.
In February 2018, Arizona resident Richard Blair paid $10,000 for the Lambo.com domain, likely hoping to make a tidy profit by selling it – Lambo is a popular nickname for the company.
Blair put Lambo.com up for sale several times. He first listed it for £1.12 million in August 2020, increasing the price to $1.5 million in December that year. A month later, it jumped to $3.3 million, increasing it again to $12 million in September 2021.
Apparently not content with these amounts, Blair pushed the price to $58 million in August 2022, and it finally reached $75 million in September 2023. Potential buyers reportedly made offers to buy the domain during this time but Blair turned them all down.
Road & Track writes that after purchasing the domain, Blair started referring to himself as "Lambo" online and claiming he was drawn to the name as a play on the word lamb, not the car company.
He also directed Lambo.com to his own site featuring a blog post, part of which read, "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."
Unsurprisingly, Lamborghini wasn't very happy with Blair's actions. In April 2022, it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center, requesting a transfer of the domain name under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
The UDRP is an international process used to resolve disputes over internet domain names, especially when someone registers a domain that includes a trademark they don't own.
In August 2022, the panel determined that Blair was acting in bad faith and ordered the domain be transferred to Lamborghini. Blair's response was to file a lawsuit in the hope of getting the decision reversed.
But the court has ruled that Blair had no legal right to the name and only started using the moniker after he bought the domain. The ruling added that he made no attempt to develop the website, had verbally attacked Lamborghini more than once, and was trying to profit from the company's reputation and goodwill.
Now, Blair has handed the domain to Lamborghini. Not only has he lost the original $10,000, but he's also on the hook for the legal fees.
There have been several instances where domains were sold for millions. Voice.com sold for $30 million in 2019, the most expensive all-cash domain-only sale ever. Chat.com went for $15.5 million in 2023, NFTs.com sold for $15 million in 2022, and Rocket.com was sold for $14 million in 2024.