[arin-discuss] that court case

[Scott Leibrand]

I'm not a lawyer either, but in reading
http://www.arin.net/media/dismissal-granted.pdf it looks to me like the
court dismissed Kremen's lawsuit based exclusively on various statutes of
limitations, without making any ruling on the merits of the claims.  As
far as I can tell, that document doesn't do anything to settle the
question of whether IP addresses can be considered property or not...

However, in the Conclusion section of
http://www.arin.net/media/clarification-granted.pdf, the judge orders
Kremen to submit a Registration Services Transfer Application, orders ARIN
to approve the application, and orders ARIN to transfer some of the
disputed netblocks (the ones the original defendant got from ARIN and ARIN
still controls) once Kremen signs an RSA.

As John Curran just mentioned, in its application for clarification, ARIN
asserted its right to allocate IP addresses, which the court quoted in
vacating the original order and issuing the clarified order.  Not being a
lawyer I'm not sure how strong of an endorsement of ARIN's position that
represents, but at the very least the court isn't doing anything to
dispute or undermine ARIN's argument.

I suspect that this case will set precedent (at least in northern
California) that if netblocks are included as part of a judgment
transferring substantially all of an organizations network assets, that
the recipient still has to go through the normal Registration Services
Transfer process and follow the same rules as when an organization or its
network is being acquired.  In other words, it seems to uphold that little
corner of the status quo...

-Scott

On 12/27/06 at 9:19am -0500, Edward Lewis <Ed.Lewis at neustar.biz> wrote:

> Apparently the court decided something - I saw this on CircleID:
>
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/legal_attack_arin_dismissed/
>
> The ARIN press release is here:
>
> http://www.arin.net/media/releases/dismissal-release.pdf
>
> ARIN's media page (on this) is:
>
> http://www.arin.net/media/index.html
>
> Looking at the legal papers, I see a lot of talk about the statute of
> limitations running out on this matter.  Was that the deciding
> factor, or did the court set any precedent that "IPs is not
> property"?  (Sorry, IP addresses and AS numbers are not...)
>
> In the ARIN press release, it says that this is a "victory" for the
> policy process.  The only document linked to from ARIN's media page
> that has the work "policy" in it is
> http://www.arin.net/media/clarification-granted.pdf - and I think
> that that is a document from ARIN to the court, not the other way
> around.
>
> I'm not doubting that the ruling is good for ARIN and how it works.
> I'm questioning my ability to understand the legal documents, mostly
> to know or understand better the legal justification for ARIN's (and
> I mean the membership, not staff) being.
>
> --
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
> NeuStar
>
> Dessert - aka Service Pack 1 for lunch.
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