[arin-ppml] On USG 'granting of rights' (was: ARIN-PPML 2015-2)

[William Herrin]

On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Seth Johnson <seth.p.johnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> If it's copyright, the judge won't do that.  There's no such thing as
> an "exclusive right to use" in copyright.

Hi Seth,

IP addresses are definitely not copyrights. Or trademarks, patents or
trade secrets. So far as I know, they're not any kind of
*intellectual* property whose existence derives from statute and, in
the U.S., from the Constitution itself.

I suspect they're Common Law *Intangible* Property which is something
else entirely. At least they are in common law jurisdictions which
includes all of the U.S. and Canada and if I'm not mistaken everywhere
else in the ARIN region as well.

Much of Europe operates on Roman Civil Law rather than English Common
Law. The legal foundations over there are so different I couldn't
begin to speculate how IP addresses fit.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>