Mark Ferguson (owner of MCOL) has posted an update on the situation with the BMW lawyers:
… We did receive a new letter from BMW’s legal team … they attempted to provide some additional clarification on how they are classifying sites as enthusiast vs. commercial … they indicate that enthusiast sites (eg – clubs) can not have links to commercial sites such as a MINI-focused vendor and be able to have MINI or MINI COOPER in their name. This is still confusing to me in that clubs do not typically have any form of financial benefit for doing so …
So the BMW legal position still appears to be that if I have a link to, for example, the excellent Hot Pocket, then I should not have “mini” in my web domain name! Even though I make no money from that link; and even though MINI USA has no equivalent product so they are not losing any business.
M&I / GBMINI 