In the late 1930s, respected Columbia University professor Edward Kasner asked his 9-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a name for a very large number. Kasner consequently announced to the mathematics community that a 1 followed by 100 zeros would henceforth be known as a "googol".
Seventy years later the term has been tweaked and reinvented as the name of the world's most popular search engine, a company on the verge of an anticipated $2.7 billion flotation.
Google Inc. has been open about the way it picked its name - its site explains that the "play on the term reflects the company's mission to organise the immense amount of information available on the web."
The Kasner family is not happy.
Kasner's great-niece, Peri Fleisher, told the Baltimore Sun that Google is "playing off that number and not compensating us even a little bit." She added, "If nothing else, they should have given us the opportunity to operate as insiders for the IPO."
When asked if she believes that Google has an obligation to compensate the family, Fleisher replied, "legally, that's an open question we're exploring."
But the family is unlikely to make any headway in a claim that its rights in the name have been infringed.
According to the John MacKenzie, intellectual property lawyer with Masons, the firm behind OUT-LAW.COM:
"This claim looks doomed from the start. There is generally no copyright in a single word, and there does not seem to be any suggestion that the word 'Googol' has been used as a trade mark. When people see 'Google' they think of the search engine, not a mathematician."