Sanity, you ask too much...

While I can understand Dell's reaction I am not sure that it makes good precedent. It makes me uneasy that we seem to be handing ownership of the word "Dell" to a corporation and even more when the situation includes an oft used English word like "shell". A little research suggest that Shell has registered hundreds, if not thousands of words containing Shell in them - and is effectively camping on them since 99% are not utilised. If they have overlooked trademarking the words shelltrading, or it has not been in common use, and I guess that must be the case, then they should not have an inalienable right to the use of those words.

This very much depends on your perspective, but trying to control domain usage, particularly in the blurry areas mentioned is just too complicated - sometimes you have to rely on the consumer having some brains. The alternative is corporatising large slabs of our language.

Finally, I think "sanity" and "domain registration" are mutually exclusive :)