AskJolene Hit With BMW Cease-and-Desist Demand
 

Hi all,

Jolene in the middle of attack :(

I hope that my lawyers know what they doing, I don?t want to give up the freedom to distribute objective search results.

Just want to share this with you all

Jolene

The complete story:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041012/uktu013_1.html

I read that yesterday. Crazy request - should we advise everyone worldwide not to pose on BMWs anymore? Perhaps not buy them if they will put their cars on pictures & use their 'brand' to describe the car in the image or page?

IMHO, if the car is in the pic or gallery or site - people have paid enough for it to allow them the right to describe what's in the pic! I wonder if they are hitting dealerships with used cars (non-BMW authorized dealers) with the same C&D?

Wow, that's just stupid. Good luck with it.

Wait, tell them it is the acronym for Big Meaty Woman

Wtf lol thats crazy as hell. Who is next google?

that sucks :(

That sucks and if you need us... you'll know where to find us..

is it even worth fighting bmw over this

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I would like to add a note here: AskJolene spiders all galleries in the world what means that the galleires could be from anybody. including you.

If a case like this would be won, it would mean that BIG companies like BMW, can restrict you in making galleries and using keywords/content/stories.

Right now a laywer is taking care of this, and we will be be back with news on this matter!


I don't think the adult is waiting for things like this, that would even more regulate the industry, and surfers won't be free to search what turns them on.


see the legal documents here :
link to page with press release and legal documents

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a friend of mine has an upholstery business, and his company used the initials b.m.w. in his company name. he got a C&D from them also, and had to change his company name. although his was a bit more of a straight forward case than his.

although it seems like a frivolous claim they are making with you, i think you would be crazy to try and fight someone like bmw, milk it for short term publicity and then comply with there request, it will only cost you a lot of money in the long term if you don't.

Sorry to here...BMW has a staff of lawyers..hey why not sue everybody...It does not do much for their image in the end.

I know many peeps here are BMW fans. I did business with the Plant in SC. Their list of demands were ridiculous. They paid through the nose for material cause they were the worst buyers.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

they should spend more time on making a decent car design than the last crap that is called 5-series instead going after sites.

Did you ever had any legal cases with them ?

This is a perfect example of capitalism run amuck. Best of luck with the case - I hope for the sake of us all that AskJolene is able to ride this one out!

Trademark is an issue of law, not capitalism.

Just lawyers with oo much time on their hands...

Wow Thats crazy. I hope all goes well with this.

they can do shit, but for you its good exposure, already got some nice yahoo traffic? :)

oh man that's crazy! Just as a tip http://www.solv.nl this law firm is specialized in internet law, they have done the Kazaa case on NL too. :2 cents:

Good luck ! I'm sure you will get some nice traffic from this news! :D

what about all those sponsor programs having great cars in their design?

good luck with the fight against them - seems to stupid to imagine they can win this case against you guys

by the way, AskJolene kicks ass! :thumbsup

Good point you have there, not allowing that could be a next step when losing a case like this. Even people wearign branded clothes or shooting on the streets where certain brand can be seen ( cars/clothes/shops) , So I think it is quite a important matter.

No, We were ISO certified so they could not get us on anything, but at some point there list of demands were so pety that we had to sell them through a distributor who was willing to deal with the paperwork and packaging anal retentive instructions...I have to admit I fudged a few assays to get material in their door

Why don't they go after the owner(s) of the galleries (or their hosts)? They are the ones committing any infractions, not a search engine.

.



Yes ot the contentshooters/photographers...... but I think that is not the case, what we want is thet people can search on relevance.

I think it is impossible for searchengines, like google to delete all content that could contain stuff that a certain brand dislikes.

This is probably their mentality... "Why go after little tad poles, when you can go after big fish" of course they don't want to go against the big whales ie. google.


btw I love your traffic Jolene! Sorry to hear, and best of luck.. :)

I have the flu, so if I am wrong on this please for give me.

But is BMW trying to say, that if you purchase a car from them, you are infringing on their trademark by describing your car???


With the fever I have I may have misunderstood.

This is true, but a company can choose to enforce a trademark issue or not. They?ve chosen to go too far in this case. It?s frivolous.

do you own the page that is in question? if not tell them to fuck off. they have to go after the company that owns the page.

BMW's lawyers receive a non success based salary and if they don't have anything to do but the company wants to see them doing something shit like this happens.Unbelievable....

have companies sued the larger search engines regarding content? i highly doubt any were successful, too lazy to search.

I'll bet BMW is one of your top search terms now.

www.nissan.com


ahhhh the power of a corporate car company. To make a long story short, Uzi Nissan is a jewish businessman who came to America before Nissan did. Every company he owned any part in got sued for damages him holding this url has caused. Keep in mind almost NO car company on this planet owns the domain associated with their companies name by a straight shot like that including Ford.

If you fight it, more power to you but they will attempt to run you over, the law is more on your side than they were with Mr. Uzi. Good luck if you fight it but maybe just milking it and then posting a link to a copy of your site not using BMW in any way will allow you to keep your customer base.

Yes, for google Adwords content and they lost.

Not for normal search engine content because they know they'd loose.

But google filters results because of DMCA complaints (you can see it at the bottom if any exists for that keyword).

If I own a car and I want to take pictures of it, peeing on it, shitting on it, fucking someone on it, I have that right!
I pay for the car, I can do whatever the heck I want with it!

when you buy a car, there is no clause that says that you can NOT use it for erotic purposes!
So, you are in your legal right to use that car for whatever you want. Tell them to kiss your butt. If they want to push it further, charge them for advertisement.
You paid for the car, and they put the BMW symbol on the car. That means that wherever you drive the car to, you are advertising for them.

Current IRS rate is about 33 cents per mile. You do the math on how much they owe you for advertising their brand.

(that is providing you own a BMW. Otherwise, just get the other webmasters here that own one, to help you. We love debate in this industry, I'm sure more than one will help you... I don't own one, otherwise, I'd gladly do it)

Best luck!

Exactly.. :thumbsup

Are we no longer allowed to take pictures of our own cars ??

So if i took a picture of my family in front of my bmw, search engines arent allowed to list my page ... bwahahaha

APPEAL. i swear some judges have never used the internet before.

wow that is crazy....good luck with that

silly

What a frivolous lawsuit. They want you to take your search engine listings down too? Insane.

lets all ban BMW, that will teach 'm :ak47:




Good luck in the fight :thumbsup

It is their responsibility to protect their trademark. If they don't, it becomes public domain and they lose it. So they legally *have* to tell people to stop using their name for commercial purposes without their permission. *shrug* Using copyrights in metatags seems a little unneccessary to me, but I guess you could just say "luxury car" instead of "BMW".

You sure know what you are talking about : ) They are representing our case in this matter .

Thanks for your comment.

That sucks. Hope everything gets straightened out.

some interesting links to keep up to date:

Dutch :

http://www.telegraaf.nl/i-mail/14709...blokkeren.html

US:

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041013bmwporn/

Okay . . . first off there is no way that an image is going to give a search result.

If I take a picture of my bike, and someone does a search for Harley-Davidson, that picture is not going to come up.

It is pretty obvious that anyone including BMW in the Meta tags is attempting to get traffic to their porn site by grabbing BMW traffic.

Now, if it is a gallery titled "Czarina shits on a BMW" then okay, but if someone is throwing in BMW in their keywords or alt tags, it is the same thing as someone including Disney.

I can see their point

You've been doing an excellent job playing the media. Yahoo FP would have been awesome, but who am I to say so...

Anyways, I really hope and expect you to win this case. Keep us posted.

Hi baddog I think the case in this matter is more that you don't want to be sewed for showing brands in your galleries/text/pictures.

And that you should have freedom as a searchengine to show lists on relevance, and if somebody made the effort to make a gallery for a specific query we shall list it, when a relevant search is done, as long as that is possible.

you lost me. If someone takes a picture that has a BMW in it, there is no way that any search engine is going to be able to identify the picture as being one of a BMW

see your story was picked up by http://www.fleshbot.com/