On 7 Sep 2021, at 1:46 PM, Mike Burns 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

From my perspective as a bidder against Microsoft in that Nortel auction, ARIN 
transfer policies were completely ignored until the auction winner was 
announced. The proposed sale agreements we were using in our bidding 
disregarded any transfer policies at all.

Mike -

We’ve been through this before, but again – the sales agreements that you were 
proposed were not the agreements that were ultimately approved by the court –

As initially proposed, the sale sought recognition of the IP addresses as 
property and did not recognize ARIN’s inherent role with respect to IP address 
management. ARIN intervened in the bankruptcy sale.  Microsoft and the Nortel 
estate ultimately voluntarily agreed to modify the transaction consistent with 
ARIN's right to review and approve the transaction following ARIN's established 
policy.  Specifically,  the parties modified the transfer agreement to be a 
transfer of rights and interests in the address blocks, and called for a RSA 
contract between ARIN and Microsoft. After ARIN’s investigation confirmed 
Microsoft's need for the numbers and found that the transfer complied with 
established policy, ARIN assented and permitted the transfer to proceed.   
(Nortel Networks Inc. et al., No. 09-10138 (KG), Docket # 5253 (D. Del. Apr. 
13, 2011).

It's true that it was the first true public IPv4 sale, and was seminal in that 
regard.

We did many transfers before that time (i.e. 2009 and 2010) as a result of 
having an approved transfer policy – I do not know if any of those were “public 
sales” or part of “the transfer market" by your definition, but they definitely 
were transfers.

It's a disingenuous to say that ARIN transfer policy drove the market, I think 
that's cart-before-the-horse revisionism.

Agreed, and I would not say such…   what I pointed out to Michel is that 
_transfers_ were not “set in motion” by the Nortel case –  We were already 
doing them years earlier as it was first enabled by the adoption of the 
transfer policy in the ARIN region.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

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