Google's Gmail faces trademark, privacy challenges

Setting out these policies clearly and precisely is vital if Google is to remain within the law: As it stands, they said, Gmail may conflict with a European Union directive on privacy that users' consent must be informed, specific and unambiguous.

Rosing said Google believes its policies are clearly laid out and protect users' privacy. "We're committed to protecting user privacy to the maximum extent that we can do while at the same time abiding by the law," he said.

However good Google's intentions, they're worth nothing if the company folds, said one observer.

"There have already been cases where dot-coms with a sound privacy policy went bankrupt and had to sell their user database to companies with worse privacy policies," said Christian Mock, a spokesman for Austrian campaign group Quintessenz, which styles itself an association for the re-establishment of the citizen rights in the information age.

No one knows the likelihood of Google going under, since the company is not quoted on the stock exchange and nobody knows about its financial data, Mock wrote in an e-mail.

Google may have some other protecting to do. Days after it announced the details of Gmail, its trademark is already being disputed. Following Google's use of the name Gmail in a press release, financial service provider The Market Age PLC (TMA) registered its interest in the name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the British company said in a news release Tuesday.

TMA launched a Web-based e-mail service called Gmail in mid-2002 as part of an online share price and currency exchange rate analysis service offered by subsidiary Pronet Analytics.com Ltd., it said. Pronet's Gmail allows subscribers to annotate stock price charts and forward them by e-mail. The company is seeking advice on how to protect its intellectual property, it said.

(With additional reporting by Stephen Lawson in San Francisco.)