The American Chemical Society says Google's new academic and scientific search engine, Google Scholar, is infringing on its established search product, Scifinder Scholar. The ACS filed a statement of claim in US District Court in the District of Columbia, part of which seeks a permanent injunction against Google from using the word 'Scholar' for its beta search product.

Google launched Google Scholar in November 2004. The ACS action, filed in December, claims the society holds a common-law trademark on the word 'Scholar,' because its search engine is often shortened to that one word. "We have had a well-respected search service, Scifinder Scholar, since 1998," says Flint Lewis, the secretary and general counsel of the ACS. "It services nearly a thousand university subscribers."

"Hundreds of thousands of scientists have used it to explore research topics and to locate and browse journal and patent references, substance information, regulated chemicals, chemical reactions, and chemical supplier information through world-leading databases, created by the ACS's Chemical Abstracts Service over the past 97 years," says Lewis. "Our action is not in any way focused on functionality; we are focusing simply on the use of the name."

Steve Langton, a spokesman for Google, says: "We are confident in our use of the name Google Scholar. This lawsuit is without merit."