Reuters Posted online: Thursday, April 08, 2004 at 1301 hours IST Updated: Thursday, April 08, 2004 at 1650 hours IST
London, April 8: First, it was privacy advocates who vowed to fight Google's proposed e-mail service, Gmail. Now, a small-cap independent investment research firm said it owns the trademark to "Gmail" and it intends to battle to keep it.
London-based The Market Age said it had at its peak a year ago 1,000 customers representing 300 banks signed up for its core "Pronet" Web-based research application service, of which "Gmail" is a primary research product.
"When the news came out about Google's Gmail last week, I went to the US patent and trademark authorities. I thought maybe we were in trouble. But they hadn't (registered)," Shane Smith, group chief executive of Market Age, told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said that on Saturday he paid the $700 (440 pounds) in fees to register "Gmail" under the company's name. The Market Age never registered a "Gmail" Web domain, he added.
Google officials in London could not immediately be reached for comment.
Since announcing last week it plans to launch a Web-based e-mail service for consumers capable of storing a lifetime's worth of e-mails, Google has come under fire from privacy advocates in Europe and the United States.
Google, the world's most popular search engine and a Web surfers favourite, has a squeaky clean reputation.
But Gmail has become a mounting concern with privacy advocates mainly because Gmail users would not be able to permanently delete e-mail messages sent to their account.
Smith said Google has not been in contact with his firm. He declined to say if the company would consider licensing the name to Google.
Shares in The Market Age more than doubled to a high of 27.5 pence on Tuesday after it mentioned its claim on the "Gmail" trademark. The jump was helped by a "buy note" from an analyst at Corporate Synergy.
