Jot this down as a lesson in corporate asset management; Lexar let the domain Lexr.com expire after 22 years.
It sounds crazy, but it’s true: the technology giant with billions of dollars in revenue could not keep control of an intellectual property asset it held since 1996.
The domain Lexr.com expired and dropped, then was caught by domain drop-catching industry leader, DropCatch, that is now auctioning the domain.
Why would such a large corporation lose control of a premium, short .com domain such as Lexr.com?
There are a couple of reasons that we could think of: an accident, or pure incompetence to track IP assets.
In the case of Lexr.com and Lexar Media, corporate mergers and acquisitions that arrive without a solid asset inventory management process, can lead to intangible asset loss.
In 2006, Micron acquired Lexar Media, and at that time operations on the Lexr.com domain switched to an email address under Micron.com.
But it doesn’t stop there: Longsys, a Chinese company, acquired the Lexar brand from Micron in 2017, paving the road for fumbling the proverbial ball on asset control.
Let’s just say that a strong corporate and operational culture are required in order to stay on top of digital property, such as corporate domain names. In the case of Lexr.com, this is a prime example of failure to research, catalogue and track such inventory.
End result: Lexr.com will be sold to one of the current bidders in the DropCatch auction, currently at $270 dollars.
Lexr.com is in auction
Update: The Lexr.com auction ended at $1,409 dollars, according to Namebio.
