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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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