[gravitronic]

How can Nortel sell something they do not own?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Markets...

"The concept of legal "ownership" of IP addresses as property is explicitly denied by ARIN and RIPE NCC policy documents and by the ARIN Registration Services Agreement. It is not even clear in which country's legal system the lawsuits would be resolved."

[johnbatch]

These are "Legacy" IPv4 addresses, that were allocated before the formation of any RIR