Tesla Motors Finally Gets Its Paws on Tesla.com

According to Forbes, in 2015, Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $13 billion. But even with that much dough, the co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla Motors still couldn’t land the domain name tesla.com until just this week. On Thursday, he officially pried the URL from the white-knuckled clutches of a California engineer, Stuart Grossman.

Now tesla.com directs to teslamotors.com, securing and advancing the company’s world domination. This also takes it out of the realm of other domain names that frustrate fans, like milk or the Los Angeles Rams.

Apparently, Grossman defended tesla.com in a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) against Musk’s company and the latter had to settle for Teslamotors.com instead.

NamePros.com actually communicated with Grossman on the matter, but couldn’t get a number on the sale. He said that he was currently too busy with his family and work to use the domain name productively. Which, fine, makes sense, but apparently, with the UDRP and “frequent (but not very serious) requests to buy, borrow, or use the name,” the whole thing became a “burden” to Grossman. And by burden, he also means he was stalked and harassed.

“Despite being insulated by my registrars privacy scheme, people still tracked me down, and called my home, sent letters, and in one case even dropped by for a visit,” Grossman reveals. “In another instance, a bunch of spam went out with tesla.com as the (faked) originating address. I think it contained a virus or a link to something bad. That resulted in a bunch of hate mail and a couple of very nasty phone calls to my residence.”

His lawyer told Bloomberg Business that he first snagged the domain name in 1992 because he’s a huge fan of inventor Nikola Tesla. It also points out that this now gives Musk the opportunity to cut the “Motors” from the title of the company. What’s the ultimate message of this story? Musk wins again.