Yahoo! Mexico, an affiliate of Internet portal company Yahoo! Inc., said Tuesday it had changed the Internet address for its Mexico portal due to a legal dispute over who owns the address in Mexico.

Yahoo's Mexico portal was previously accessed through the address, known as a URL in Internet jargon, www.yahoo.com.mx. Yahoo Mexico said it was now available at www.mx.yahoo.com.

"As an established trademark, and world leader, we owe our users, shareholders and partners every effort to vigorously fight to reclaim our URL and that is what we will do," Yahoo! Mexico's marketing director Alberto Perez Calderon said in a statement made available to Reuters Tuesday.

The statement did not say what Mexican company had challenged Yahoo Mexico for the rights to the name.

Notimex news agency reported Monday that Yahoo Mexico made the change late last week after the government Mexican Intellectual Property Institute (IMPI) suspended Yahoo Mexico's use of the Internet address because a different Mexican business had registered the address in 1996.

Yahoo launched its Mexico site in October 1999.

Officials at IMPI were not immediately available for comment.

In the statement, Perez Calderon said the new Yahoo Mexico site contained information for holders of e-mail accounts using the yahoo.com.mx domain on how they could access their mail under the new address.