Google Inc. sued for trademark infringement

Google Inc is being sued in China by a Beijing company that claims the owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine is using the Chinese business's name.

"We want Google to change their commercial name, and are not suing for any damages," Tian Yunshan, company secretary for Beijing Guge Science and Technology Co, told Bloomberg News in an telephone interview yesterday. The case against Google's Chinese unit has been accepted by a Haidian district court in Beijing on June 29, he said.

Mountain View, California-based Google said in April 2006 that its China unit would change its name to "Gu Ge," which means "harvesting song" in Chinese, to attract more users in the world's second-biggest online market.

Google China does not comment on ongoing lawsuits, Marsha Wang, a spokeswoman for Google China, said in an e-mail.

"As early as January 2006, Google filed trademark applications in a variety of areas to register 'Gu Ge' with China's Trademark Office of State Administration for Industry & Commerce," Google China said yesterday in an e-mail.

China had 144 million Web users as of the end of April, according to government data. The United States had 211.1 million Internet users at the end of March, according to the Website of Internet World Stats.

"The search engine's Chinese name is the same as Beijing Guge's commercially registered name," Tian said. He declined to disclose what the company main businesses are.