By John Leyden for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with
permission.
UK-based financial services firm Independent International
Investment Research (IIIR) said its subsidiary ProNet Analytics has
been using the Gmail name for a web-mail application since the
middle of 2002, two years before Google began offering Gmail
accounts to consumers. The email service offered by ProNet, by
contrast, is used mainly by investors in currency derivatives.
The two companies entered talks into the right to use the Gmail
brand but the negotiations broke down several months ago after they
failed to agree a financial settlement. An IIR-commissioned
assessment put a minimum value on the Gmail brand of £25m ($46m), a
figure Nigel Jones, Google's senior European counsel, described as
"exorbitant". Google continues to dispute IIIR's trademark
claim.
Jones told the BBC
that to "avoid any distraction to Google and our users" it was
switching brands to Googlemail in the UK while trademark lawyers
attempt to resolve the dispute.
A separate trademark dispute forced Google to switch from Gmail
to Googlemail in Germany back in May. The BBC reports that German
Googlemail users sent email to their username at "@gmail.com"
instead of "@googlemail.com" still receive these misdirected
messages.
© The Register
2005
