Not a single soul in my neighborhood (all Netscape users back in the day, at least those who actually had internet back then) would use the word "Netschaap" to refer to Netscape. Now I do like only 20 km away from the (Belgian) border, but that's still Netherlands (and on the Belgian side of the border they still speak Dutch, at least when you pass it near my hometown).
When it comes to trademark names things are always a bit complicated, especially when the trademark or brand name is used for different purposes. The name "Sierra" is the name of a car model by Ford, but it was also the name of a game development company.
Indeed AOL lost the case, however that was a close call as they initially won the case, however when Moerstaal, owner of the Netschaap domain went to a higher judge the earlier verdict was overruled, making that AOL ultimately lost the case. Now I must say even when it was a parody cases like these are not easily won. I do remember that when the band Aqua had a hit song with "Barbie girl" that Mattel, the owner of the Barbie doll brand on which the song was clearly based, tried to sue Aqua for that, however the judge deemed the case so silly they didn't even wanna look at it making Mattel lose the case before the trial even had begun (especially since the judge wanted Mattel to explain why the sales on Barbie dolls broke all sales records when that song was a hit if the song was so bad to Mattel's image). YMCA by the Village People was almost sued by YMCA but the case was withdrawn when YMCA had far more reservations than before that song came.
Even though cases like these are not easily successful, it can still save a lot of stress, and dealing with lawyers and such (the Netscape case did cost Moerstaal a lot of money for getting a layer and such in order. Since I had a subdomain hosted by Moerstaal myself I received a pretty detailed latter about the case). Moerstaal was big enough to get some people to help getting that all done. As a lonely indie developer you have not, and that's why I personally recommend to avoid brand names, trademarks and so on...