National law, as well as a legal court order, will supersede a private organisation's (membership association in this case) policies. Within EU, Brussels I bis regulation allows, among other things, the enforcing of (example) German court orders in The Netherlands with some exceptions. See https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32012R1215 Kaj ________________________________ From: Denys Fedoryshchenko <admin@nuclearcat.com> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2025 10:04 To: members-discuss@ripe.net <members-discuss@ripe.net> Subject: [members-discuss] Re: Does anyone have experience with the seizure of IP addresses at RIPE? [You don't often get email from admin@nuclearcat.com. Learn why this is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ] Hi, I am not a lawyer, but I believe the court may be making a fundamental mistake in treating IP addresses as transferable assets. In practice, IP addresses are not property but usage rights, comparable to frequency spectrum licenses in telecommunications. For example, if a company holds a frequency license in one jurisdiction, that license cannot simply be seized and reassigned to an unrelated third party by a foreign court. The license remains subject to the authority of the issuing body, which can revoke or reallocate it if regulatory conditions are not met. By the same logic, IP address allocations are managed by RIPE under specific membership and policy rules. Attempting to enforce their transfer outside RIPE’s framework risks immediate revocation, since RIPE retains ultimate authority over allocation and registration. This makes it questionable whether a garnishment or transfer order from a national court can override RIPE’s regulatory framework. All above is just humble opinion. On Fri, 2025-08-22 at 11:36 +0200, Thomas Czarnetzki wrote:
Dear,
we are the sponsoring LIR of a company that has a claim against a RIPE member in Germany. This claim was confirmed by court judgment through an enforcement order. As part of the compulsory enforcement, there is a garnishment and transfer order instructing RIPE to transfer the member’s IP addresses.
However, RIPE refuses to comply and comes up with all sorts of ideas, e.g. that the creditor should first become a RIPE member, or that the whole matter must first be served to RIPE by a Dutch court, etc. Obviously, RIPE does not seem to care much about applicable EU law and legal proceedings.
The lawyer now recommends suing RIPE, since they are not complying with the garnishment order, thereby making themselves liable for damages, and should then directly pay the claim against the RIPE member instead of releasing the IP addresses.
That would, of course, be even easier, since nobody would have to deal with the sale of the IPs, etc.
Has anyone here ever had any experience with this? Or perhaps an idea how to get RIPE to act in compliance with the law?
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