Online retailer Tiger Direct has filed a legal claim against Apple over the name of its latest operating system.

The US web store claims that Apple's branding infringes its trademark for the word 'Tiger', and asks that the company refrains from using the term as this could lead to confusion for consumers.

Tiger Direct complained that it saw its ranking among search engines drop because of Apple's marketing campaign in the months leading up to last Friday's launch of the new operating system.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 3 May.

Florida-based Tiger Direct was founded in 1987 as a subsidiary of Systemax and started out as a catalogue and mail order business.