Michael,

It's not that your friend runs a bad site with no value, it's that so many other people DO run scammy WP-related sites - I guess they are tired of it.

Here's a FREE sentence from my upcoming e-book, The Wealthy Bastard's Guide to Internet Marketing 101 :

"Registering a URL that contains a trademark, without the explicit permission AND the continuing good graces of the legal owner, is a time-bomb waiting to happen."

You can't use THEIR marketing / name / good reputation in your URL in order to profit off it, without their blessings. You have to come up with YOUR OWN brand.

I thought this was common knowledge in marketing circles, but in case you didn't know, here's good example of why you shouldn't do it.

You brought up a great point about "WordPerfect For Dummies" books - and how they use trademarked names in the title of their publication- but I think that with URL names the law tends to be more strict. An actual, printed book has all kinds of features give it a distinctive look and brand. You can look at it, examine it, see the colors and tell who published it at a glance. Many features set the Dummies book apart from "WordPerfect(tm) - The Official Owner's Manual."

On the 'net - your name is everything. It's all you have to stand on, all your customers will remember you by. Not your look, not your location, not your cover.

P.S.S.S.S.S.
I wish I could register some of the (lucrative!) trademark-containing URLs I have come up with. If I could put a blog up there and get away with it for the long-term, I'd be able to ride their brand power and use the SEO/keyword advantage for some serious buckage.