US company Bloomberg said Wednesday it has withdrawn an intellectual property lawsuit filed against Shanghai Great Wisdom Co, ending a year-long dispute between the two major financial information providers in China.

In December 2011, Bloomberg brought the suit against Great Wisdom for unfair competition on the grounds that the Chinese company was infringing the product trade dress of the Bloomberg Professional service by copying certain distinctive aspects of Bloomberg's monitors, keyboards and screen displays, the US company said in a statement sent to the Global Times Wednesday.

Bloomberg demanded compensation of 6.6 million yuan ($1.06 million). The case was heard at Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court in July 2012. Great Wisdom responded in the court hearing that some similar designs are commonly used in the financial information services field, and that both firms use Hewlett-Packard as their manufacturer, which could lead to some similarities.

The court asked both companies to provide further information after the initial hearing.

"After we filed suit, Great Wisdom made certain changes to those elements, thereby limiting the risk that consumers would confuse the two products," the statement said.

"The result signals a victory to us," Zhang Long, an investor relations staff member of Great Wisdom, told the Global Times Wednesday.

"Bloomberg spent more than 2 million yuan for lawyers' fees on this lawsuit. Withdrawing the lawsuit indicates that it lacks confidence that it can win the case," a staff member at the legal department of Great Wisdom, who declined to give her name, told the Global Times.

"We make changes to our financial services terminal on a regular basis to meet our clients' demand, not because of the lawsuit," she said.

Competition is fierce in China's financial services market, and lawsuits between rival firms have become common.

Financial information provider Shanghai Wind Information Co filed a lawsuit against Zhejiang Hithink Flush Information Network Co on November 21, 2012, claiming Hithink's iFinD terminal infringed on its intellectual property rights and demanding compensation of 99.2 million yuan.

The case will be heard at Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court on January 31.