PRNewswire (http://prnewswire.com) announced on October 13 that the German car manufacturer BMW AG has ordered the adult search engine AskJolene.com (www.AskJolene.com) to immediately remove a number of results from its index and to blacklist the providers of the documents.
AskJolene.com collects free erotic contents from the web and offers its users a dedicated full text search engine to locate galleries of their liking. The results are presented as summaries that link to their original gallery, but the galleries are not hosted by AskJolene.com.
BMW AG claims that AskJolene.com infringes on its trademark rights. AskJolene's results for the search query “BMW” contain galleries in which the word “BMW” occurs. They also contain pornographic pictures depicting amongst other things a BMW car.
AskJolene.com, though, will not yield to the claim. Mike Schwalbach, chief of marketing at AskJolene, said that AskJolene hasn't done anything wrong, that the AskJolene search engine is a navigational aid that provides a way for its users to locate galleries as quick and convenient as possible, and that if AskJolene gives in to BMW's claim, other search engines will have a problem as well.
