North American Network Operators Group

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RE: Can a customer take IP's with them?

  • From: Andy Dills
  • Date: Wed Jun 23 18:16:27 2004

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, David Schwartz wrote:

> > Contracts are rarely as binding as people think they are. Of course, I'm
> > no lawyer, I just hate paying them.
>
> 	Let me try to give you a hypothetical to show you why ARIN is irrelevent.
> Suppose I am a member of the Longshoreman's assocation and you have a
> contract to buy shrimp for $8/pound provided you only resell it to members
> of the LA. You then enter into a contract with me to sell me shrimp for
> $10/pound. But then I leave the LA. Ooops, now you can no longer resell me
> the shrimp. So you break our contract and I sue you. Does your contract with
> your shrimp provider matter? If you continue to sell me shrimp even though
> I'm not in the LA, who does your shrimp supplier sue? You or me?

That's not a valid analogy. There are property rights conveyed properly at
every step of the way; the distributor who is contractually bound to sell
shrimp to you at $10 would be required, by your contract with him, to
acquire shrimp from an alternate source, one that didn't involve violating
contractual obligations, or else the shrimp distributor runs the risk of
being sued by you. Basically, there are other sources of shrimp. If the
distributor contracted himself into a corner where he's losing money
because he didn't have an "out" in the contract with you in the event you
leave LA, then he needs a new lawyer.

So instead, let me give you a valid analogy.

If you ran a museum, and you contracted for the use and display of an
artifact, and then somehow entered into a contract to sell somebody else
that artifact (even though you had no property rights), the original
contract supercedes the second contract. Additionally, because there is no
alternate source for the item in question (being an artifact and all), the
museum can't be forced to acquire the same item (potentially at a loss) to
complete the second contract; they would just have to return the money.

Basically, you cannot grant rights contractually that you do not have in
the first place. This is one of the easiest ways to have a contact or part
of a contract rendered void.

I'm no lawyer, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong ;)

Andy

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Andy Dills
Xecunet, Inc.
www.xecu.net
301-682-9972
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