[arin-ppml] Borders sells their /16 block

[Mike Burns]

In the MS/Nortel deal I will note the judge said that Nortel had the 
exclusive right to transfer addresses which were not registered to Nortel, 
but in fact were allocated to their bankrupt prior acquisitions.
Nowhere in the deal was there language stating that Nortel had that right 
only due to after-the-fact 8.2 transfers. Rather it appears he accepted the 
chain of custody documents showing that Nortel acquired the exclusive rights 
to those addresses without regard to ARIN transfer policies.
Thus the judge accepted that the address rights flowed from one company to 
another without any regard to ARIN policies.
I find this significant.

Regards,
Mike



-----Original Message----- 
From: John Curran
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011 1:32 PM
To: ARIN PPML
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Borders sells their /16 block

On Dec 7, 2011, at 2:20 PM, John Curran wrote:

> On Dec 7, 2011, at 2:12 PM, Benson Schliesser wrote:
>
>> To an extent, this has been acknowledged by the US courts as they've 
>> recognized the exclusive rights of a seller to transfer IP addresses as 
>> an asset.
>
> Benson -
>
>  Please provide a citation for the above, because I am not aware
>  of any court ruling to this effect.  The only findings that I am
>  aware of are rulings that support the sale of an address holders
>  rights in an address block in a manner that does not interfere with
>  ARIN and ARIN community's rights with respect to the address block.

For the purposes of saving some time (since everyone is going to
go looking for much of the same information), let me outline the
Nortel/MSFT outcome:

To be clear, Nortel did transfer its rights of certain address
registrations to Microsoft.  Rights can indeed be treated as an
asset of an estate (e.g. airspace rights, mining rights, license
rights) but that does not mean that the underlying item is a form
of "free and clear" property, only that something (often limited in
nature) has been transferred.

The original sale order would have transferred Nortel's rights and
interests "free and clear" to Microsoft.  ARIN filed an objection
with the court, and the parties were able to work out an amended
sale and court order which was satisfactory.  The parties (Nortel
and Microsoft) jointed submitted a revised sales order that said the
addresses "will be placed under a registration services agreement
(LRSA) between ARIN and Microsoft", and draft court order that read
"For avoidance of doubt, this Order shall not affect the LRSA
and Purchaser's rights in Internet Numbers transferred pursuant to
this Order shall be subject to the terms of the LRSA".  Microsoft
entered into an RSA (Registration Services Agreement) with ARIN,
which delineated their rights applicable to their use of the number
resources. In summary, this case's outcome was that it was in all
parties interests to deal only with those rights that the Internet
number registry system (in this case ARIN) indicated were available
to the address holder, as opposed to a sale "free and clear" as has
been otherwise suggested.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN



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