Just came across this story on SEOmoz, this case looks quite interesting and could have far reaching implications on domain tasting and trademark violations by those who registers domains with trademarked words or misspelled domains.
domain tasting is not legal..if they are tasting a TM name then thats one thing..but tasting in general isnt illegal
I don't think domain tasting itself is illegal, its simply an exploit of the loophole that exists in domain registration.
Indeed it isn't illegal. Dell sued the 3 registrars for trademark infringement arising from domain tasting. I've seen examples of some domain tasting some domains that don't infringe. But some have stated it's not as profitable as believed.
I think this was posted before. The only one 100% sure of making a profit with domain tasting are the registrars.
Tasting - registering a domain name, then returning it to the registry in less than five days. When the system was set up there was a loophole that let buyers cancel errors - domains were expensive back then. Now companies are using the loophole to "buy" millions of domains, stick ads on them for four+ days, keep any that have good traffic, and dump the rest at no charge. About a third of the LLLL.coms (before they were sold out) were being tasted at any given time. If they should push these guys out of business then there would be a lot more available domains. That actually might mean a small drop in aftermarket domain prices.
But the amount of Domains tasted by these registrars was phenomenal, over sixty four million in past six months! No wonder all the good domains are gone and just have a parking page. Domain tasters make good profit too, especially since they only keep those domains which get them the clicks. However it is I-CANN and Verisign which makes the most through this. Here is complete info on what Domain Tasting is, http://www.circleid.com/posts/historical_analysis_domain_tasting