Movie studio goes after most obvious domain names for its next Hangover movie.

Last month I wrote about how Warner Bros had registered five domain names related to the next installment in its popular Hangover series, including Hangover3movie.com, HangoverMovie3.com, Hangover-3.com, the-hangover-3.com, and theHangoverMovie3.com.

I also noted that someone already owned Hangover3.com, and that I didn’t expect the company to shell out big bucks to buy the domain name.

I was only sort of right.

The company will be paying some money, but it won’t go to the registrant. Instead it’s going to National Arbitration Forum, who will act as arbitor in the studio’s effort to get three domain names:

thehangoverpart3.com
hangoverpart3.com
hangover3.com

All three are owned by a Washington, D.C. man. But only until National Arbitration Forum hands down its decision.

Tobacco company claims sites sell liquid nicotine products using their famous cigarette brands.

The intellectual property holding company for R.J. Reynolds has filed two trademark lawsuits in North Carolina against online retailers selling liquid nicotine products.

The suits allege that the web sites sell products bearing the images of their famous Camel and Winston marks, such as in the image to the right.

The first suit is against YourECigarette.com and its owner. The second suit is against the owners of e-cigarettedirect.com and VeppoCig.com.

The sites specialize in selling so-called electronic cigarettes, often call simply ecigarettes. The first site sells liquid nicotine refills marked with the Camel and Winston brands, the other sites sell products with the Camel name and logo, advertising that they have “Camel like Flavor”.

A frequent DNW reader sets in motion plans for a new TLD.

In my daily perusal of U.S. trademark applications I came across another potential top level domain today: .Next (Not to be confused with the .nxt conference).

More interestingly, I recognized the name of the applicant: Mansour Elseify.

Elseify is a frequent reader and commenter on Domain Name Wire and owner of DomainsNext.com, a Tucows reseller that has been in business for 10 years.

So I reached out to him to find out what he’s up to.

“I was always behind the shadow as a reseller for ItsYourDomain and now Tucows, and I thought it is time for me to come up with the next big thing after .com,” he wrote via email. “It would be .next.”

Elseify has a registered trademark for Domains Next.com.

That’s about all he would tell me for now. But you can add this to your watchlist…

Court denies temporary restraining order for Monte Cahn’s laptop.

The latest legal battle in Monte Cahn v. Oversee.net et al is over a laptop.

Lawyers for the defendants want to get their hands on the Moniker founder’s laptop, which they say is Oversee.net company property. They claim the laptop may include confidential emails and other information about both this case and other legal matters.

The defendants filed for a temporary restraining order to get the laptop. But U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson denied the order, saying the defendants failed to explain how the laptop is an “emergency” justifying emergency relief nearly seven months after Cahn left the company and more than a month after the lawsuit began.

Lawyers for the defendants have proposed having a third party escrow the laptop for potential use in the future if there’s a court order. They claim that Cahn’s lawyer “is currently in the process of obtaining the Oversee Laptop from Mr. Cahn so that he can provide it to his hand-selected forensic consultant Intelligent Discovery Solutions (“IDS”) for purposes of creating an image of the hard drive.”

No joke: Go Daddy girl to protest alongside PETA in defense of circus elephants.

How’s this for irony: fitness guru and GoDaddy Girl Jillian Michaels is joining with PETA to protest Ringling Bros. circus and its treatment of elephants.

I’m not kidding.

In case you aren’t familiar with the story, GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons shot an elephant in Africa this year. It’s not the first time he’s done it, but the story went viral this time and a number of people said they would boycott the domain name registrar because of the incident.

PETA — the organization Jillian Michaels is teaming up with — transferred its domain names out of GoDaddy because of the incident. Parsons calls PETA hypocritical.