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January 08, 2007
Kremen Loses Challenge to ARIN's IP Address Allocation Policies--Kremen v. ARIN
By Eric Goldman
Kremen v. American Registry For Internet Numbers, Ltd., No. C 06-02554 JW (N.D. Cal. Dec. 20, 2006)
In a previous post about the Sex.com saga, I mentioned that Kremen had sued ARIN for its refusal to transfer over a block IP addresses assigned to Cohen without unwanted conditions. (ARIN was willing to transfer the IP addresses, but only on conditions that Kremen did not accept). I indicated that this case was potentially significant because ARIN's IP address allocation practices have not been judicially critiqued before, and such a review might lead to unexpected results.
Unfortunately, this case may not give us any greater insight into the legitimacy of ARIN's practices. Instead, the judge threw out Kremen's case on a technicality--expired statutes of limitations (SOLs). The judge, in a tersely worded opinion, concluded that the SOL commenced November 2001 when ARIN initially refused to assign the IP address blocks in response to Kremen's demands, and there were no new transgressions that reset the SOLs. All of Kremen's claims had 3 or 4 year SOLs (expiring no later than November 2005), and Kremen sued in April 2006, so the judge granted ARIN's motion to dismiss all of the claims.
However, Kremen's past litigation history suggests that he may very well appeal this ruling, so this case may not be over yet.
Posted by Eric at January 8, 2007 08:53 AM | Domain Names
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