Squint All You Want, It's Still Not ETRADE

Identical Or Confusingly Similar?

Morgan Stanley Domestic Holdings, LLC v. Ladarius Tremblay (FORUM Case FA2605002224238, 26 June 2026).

Domain names being sought under the UDRP are frequently identical to the Complainant’s trademark or are confusingly similar to it. The Complainant therefore frequently succeeds on the first limb of the UDRP. Frequently, but not always.

And here is one case where the Complainant failed on both counts and thus failed on the entire case.

The Complainant is the prominent finance house and, among other activities, it has long operated a platform that allows retail investors to trade stocks online. It did this under its trademarks E*TRADE and ETRADE.COM.

The domain names it sought from the Respondent were <xetrd.com>, <xetrd.trading> and <xetrd.app>.

To get it to first base, the Complainant argued that the domain names were virtually identical and confusingly similar to the trademarks. This is not, of course, what the UDRP says. Either a domain name is identical to the trademark or it is not. If not, a complainant can have another go and try to show that the domain name is confusingly similar, in this case confusingly similar to one or the other of the two trademarks.

But in this case, none of the domain names was identical to either of the trademarks. You really cannot see E*TRADE or ETRADE.COM  in any of <xetrd.com>, <xetrd.trading> or <xetrd.app>  can you?

But were any of the domain names nevertheless confusingly similar to either of the trademarks? Well, not really. It is often overlooked, or forgotten, that “confusingly similar” involves two criteria, similar and confusingly, i.e. the domain name must be similar to the trademark and it must be confusingly so : is it likely that internet users would be confused between the domain name and the trademark in the present case?

The Complaint cited a number of prior UDRP decisions, but the problem in using them for this purpose is that it really does not matter what prior decisions say, if it is being said on entirely different fact situations, which they were in the cases cited. To put it in plain language, there was at best, what the Panel described accurately as “minimal similarity”.

Then, the idea that the domain names in the present case would confuse the public was what the Panel described as “fanciful”.

The Panel therefore found that the Complainant had not satisfied the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy,as the domain names were neither identical or confusingly similar to the trademarks relied on.

A good lesson in making sure that even the most formal parts of the UDRP are complied with .