INTERNET search engine Google has dropped the Gmail name from its e-mail services in the UK yesterday in a long-running dispute about ownership of the trademark.
The US company bowed to the demands of a British company a fraction of its size and changed the name of its e-mail service to Google Mail on this side of the Atlantic.
The dispute began at the start of April last year when Google launched Gmail in the UK, signing up scores of web users because of the large amount of free data storage available.
However, its right to call the service Gmail was opposed by Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), in London, which claimed to own the trademark.
In a statement yesterday, IIIR, which specialises in providing research on international companies and currencies, said its e-mail system called G-mail was running two years before Google launched its service.
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