Italian automaker Lamborghini is seeing red thanks to Velocity Motorcars, a luxury car dealership in Nashville, Tennessee, and it’s all over a website. Similar to what happened with Nissan Motors suing a North Carolina computer company, the Italian bull is seeing red over Velocity using web domains with its coveted name.
Watch a young influencer crash his daddy’s Lamborghini for likes and attention here.
The issue is catching mainstream national attention with coverage in USA Today recently. As detailed out in that story, the trouble originally started back in August 2021 as Lamborghini was preparing to launch its first official dealership in Nashville.
Velocity owned the domain lamborghininashville.com which had been registered since 2011 and Lamborghini wanted it. When the automaker reached out to the independent dealership, it cited previous court cases where small companies that owned domains with an established brand’s name in it were made to pay restitution upon refusing to turn them over.
This news came in the form of a cease-and-desist letter from Lamborghini’s attorneys and was more than just an idle threat. When John Pasas, owner of Velocity, replied saying he wasn’t willing to just turn the domain over, asking how the parties should resolve the issue, the automaker went to the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency.
You might be thinking the UN has no power in US legal cases and you’d be wrong. The WIPO concluded Velocity acted in bad faith with the internet domain, ordering the independent dealership to transfer it to Lamborghini.
As enraging as that outcome might be for many, Pasas wasn’t going to take it sitting down. Instead, he registered lamborghiniofnashville.net and used that to generate traffic to his dealership website. Now the Italian automaker is suing for damages, this time in U.S. District Court instead of asking the UN to fight its battles.
Lamborghini argues Velocity Motorcars is profiting off its good name while damage its reputation. What’s more, the independent dealer has official Lamborghini trademarks on location and in its social media posts, something the automaker argues shouldn’t be allowed since it’s confusing consumers who might think they’re an official Lamborghini dealership.
Some are going to see this as a much larger, far more powerful company pushing around the little guy who’s just trying to make a buck. Others will view this as an issue of intellectual property theft. And still others won’t care because they think anyone who drives a Lamborghini is a jerk or has zero taste. But this case could affect subsequent similar cases.
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