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Quote:Kevin Alderman thinks of himself as "the Hugh Hefner of the digital millennium."

He's built a virtual adult entertainment empire, making and selling cyber sex toys in a three-dimensional online world known as "Second Life," a hugely popular Internet community with 7 million residents. It's an Internet universe where businesses thrive, universities teach, musicians perform and people fly.

But Alderman wants the real-life courts to settle his grievance with another avatar, or online persona.

On Tuesday, his company, Eros, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court claiming the avatar known as Volkov Catteneo has violated the trademark on one of his devices called a Sex Gen...