Despite a loss in court, Vanguard is keeping with its larger plan of invading the exhange-traded fund arena to combat popular products offered by Barclays and SSgA.

The firm will tie the first of its offering to an index createed by Wilshire Associates, The MutualFundWire.com has learned. The decision to link the product to the broad-based Wilshire 4500 was made after Vanguard lost a court fight with Standard & Poor's. That fund will mimic its Vanguard Extended Market mutual fund and is expected to be ready in the next three months.

In April of this year the firm lost the ruling by an appeals court to Standard & Poor's. Vanguard had attempted to create an ETF based on the license covering its use of the S&P 500 for mutual funds. Vanguard contended that ETFs were another form of share class. S&P dissented, arguing that ETFs are a different product altogether.

The case converning VIPERS (Vanguard's catchy name for the ETF shares) was first brought in the Summer of 2000.  

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