Found the answers on the Neulevel site (linked beneath)If a registrar offers FREE
pre-registration (with charge only in the event of actual registration) then your
money looks SAFE.
If a registrar CHARGES for pre-registration, you're on a hiding
to nothing - wave goodbye to your savings!
I see from the Neulevel site that all
pre-registrants will be notified of Intellectual claims against their chosen names,
and given the choice of cancelling, before registration takes place.
So it looks
like most of the good names will indeed go to people with Trademarks, however arbitrary
or spurious.
Once again, ICANN has adopted a process that "favours" Trademark holders
- the rest of the Internet community gets blocked out of using domain names with
generic words.
Hey! Didn't anyone tell them that the English Language is the intellectual
property of ALL the people who speak it!
And likewise the German language, the
French language etc etc