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Gmail returns to the U.K.

Google settles a long-running trademark dispute with a British research firm and can now replace googlemail.com with gmail.com in e-mail addresses.

Richard Thurston Special to CNET News

Google's U.K. Web mail users can now have an gmail.com e-mail address rather than googlemail.com, after the company settled a long-running trademark dispute with a British research firm.

Google said Tuesday it has come to an agreement with Independent International Investment Research and will begin offering people with googlemail addresses a Gmail address "over the next few months." New U.K. users will be able to sign up to a Gmail account later this week.

Since October 2005, people signing up for an e-mail address with Google have been given a googlemail address as a result of the dispute with IIR, which applied for the gmail trademark in 2002, two years before Google launched the beta version of its e-mail service. The research firm uses the term G-mail to refer to part of its financial analytics software.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

Read more of "Gmail returns to the UK" at ZDNet UK.