Google has lost it's bid to trademark the term Gmail in Europe.

The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) rejected the move by the popular search company after a strong appeal from Daniel Giersch.

Giersch runs a same-day delivery service called Gmail in Europe which competes against Deutsche Post.

The Register reports that last year, a district court in Hamburg already handed Giersch victories at both the preliminary and final stages of the litigation and Google was ordered to remove all Gmail references from its German service.

After the ruling, Giersch also announced lawsuits to defend more recent registrations of the trademark in Switzerland, Norway and Monaco.

Google has always argued the two names are not confusingly similar. The company even offered to buy the trademark rights from Giersch for $250,000, but the German entrepreneur declined. He called Google's behaviour "very threatening, very aggressive and very unfaithful".