In one post on NANOG, John Curran, the CEO of ARIN, appeared to suggest that the organization would be willing to go to court to explain IPv4 allocation policy.

"ARIN will indeed administer the policy as adopted, and will explain it as necessary in various courtrooms," Curran noted. It could not be immediately verified if the poster was indeed Curran.

Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009. Since then the company has been selling its assets in a bid to try and raise money to pay off creditors.

According to court documents, Nortel began attempting to sell the IP numbers in late 2010 after it realized their potential value.

The court appeared to acknowledge the value of IPv4 address when it noted that limited supply of IPv4 addresses offers an "opportunity to realize value from marketing the Internet Numbers, which opportunity will diminish over time as IPv6 addresses are more widely adopted."