Summary

  • A 14 May 2026 ex parte order restrained Cloud Innovation and specified related actors from publishing statements that falsely attribute judicial approval of AFRINIC-resource leasing or commercialisation.
  • The Court also ordered removal of material suggesting it had authorised leasing, monetisation, transfer or commercial exploitation. The order was temporary, returnable on 28 May and issued at AFRINIC's own risk.
  • AFRINIC's communique said the order confirmed the legal position and paired it with claims about registry policy and contracts. Those broader propositions are absent from the published two-page ruling.
  • AFRINIC's 25 June case data still described the matter as resisted and ongoing, alongside Cloud Innovation's application to stay, review or discharge the order.

The verb that changes the story

AFRINIC used the word “confirms”. The Court used “interim”.

That difference is the news.

On 14 May, a judge in chambers made an order before notice of the application had been served on Cloud Innovation. The judge recorded being satisfied, on AFRINIC's application, affidavit and annexed documents, that immediate intervention was required. The resulting injunction prohibited Cloud Innovation, its affiliates or subsidiaries and a defined group of officers and representatives from publishing any statement that falsely attributed to the Supreme Court judicial approval, endorsement or validation of leasing or commercialising AFRINIC-allocated IP resources.

A second limb required them to remove, disable, retract or cause the removal of material suggesting that the Court had sanctioned, approved or authorised leasing, monetisation, transfer or commercial exploitation of addresses allocated by AFRINIC.

Those are material restraints. A competent court imposed them, and neither party's institutional narrative can erase them. But they are restraints on attributing a position to the Court. They are not a published determination of the legality of leasing itself.

What an ex parte order leaves open

The procedural language supplies its own warning label. The order says Cloud Innovation was to be served and given a chance to show why the temporary order should not become interlocutory. It set 28 May as the date on which the respondent had to communicate its stand through the e-filing system.

It also states that the injunction was issued at AFRINIC's “own risks and perils”, backed by an undertaking to comply with any later order for damages caused by the interim relief. That clause matters because urgent relief can impose costs before the opposing party is heard. The applicant receives immediate protection, but carries potential exposure if the order should not have been obtained or maintained.

The two published pages contain no inter partes findings. They identify no particular URL or quoted sentence that crossed the line. The affidavit, annexes and application that persuaded the judge are not in the document AFRINIC linked. Readers can verify the operative prohibition; they cannot reconstruct the full evidentiary contest from that order alone.

The register order was not a leasing licence

The dispute began with LARUS marketing a first-party IPv4 leasing platform around what it called a court-ordered shareholder-position continuity structure. Its public explanation separated two roles: Cloud Innovation as the register-side position and LARUS as the customer-facing commercial layer.

There is documentary support for the first part. A published 11 June 2025 Supreme Court order expressly directed rectification of AFRINIC's register of members to add Cloud Innovation under section 91 of Mauritius's Companies Act. It also directed the Registrar of Companies to make corresponding entries, while receiver Gowtamsingh Dabee had undertaken to rectify AFRINIC's records within 15 days.

That order contradicts AFRINIC's later suggestion that the relevant record was merely its resource register: the judicial text repeatedly says “register of members”. But it does not say a word approving an IPv4 lease, monetisation model or customer contract.

Both distinctions must survive. AFRINIC should not rewrite a statutory register order as a resource-database misunderstanding. LARUS should not let proximity between that order and a commercial platform invite readers to treat membership recognition as a leasing licence.

AFRINIC expanded the order in public

AFRINIC's 15 May communique accurately said an interim order had been issued and described the prohibited judicial attribution. It then made a larger move. It said the order “confirms the legal position” and followed that sentence with its view that number resources are governed by registration policies, contractual frameworks and established RIR principles.

The published order does not contain that reasoning. It does not cite an AFRINIC policy, construe the Registration Service Agreement, declare leasing outside the framework, decide ownership or validate RIR principles. AFRINIC's propositions may be arguments it wants to make in litigation or registry administration. They did not become judicial findings merely because they appeared beside a court link.

That narrative expansion has practical force. AFRINIC is not an ordinary commentator on this market. It maintains the recognition layer on which transfers, customer confidence and operational continuity can depend. When a registry describes an interim publication restraint as confirmation of its wider legal position, banks, counterparties, compliance teams and customers may hear a threat to the underlying business before a court has decided it.

This is the enforcement-creep problem identified in Heng Lu's notes. A body created to keep accurate records can transform ambiguity into market control when it treats commercial disagreement as a basis for registry-side suspicion. The point is not that a registry must ignore law. Here, the sovereign Court issued a lawful command that must be obeyed. The point is that AFRINIC cannot enlarge that command by press release.

A case still under challenge

AFRINIC's own archived litigation data closes the factual loop. On 25 June, it described SC/COM/WRT/000338/2026 as “resisted and ongoing” and noted that an order had been granted. The same dataset listed an 11 June application by Cloud Innovation to stay the interim order, review its terms or have it discharged. That proceeding was also marked resisted and ongoing.

The frozen record therefore supports neither victory speech. It does not show that the interim order was discharged. It also does not show that it was affirmed after a contested hearing or converted into final relief.

NRS says AFRINIC obtained an injunction against a claim LARUS did not make. LARUS told The Register it had never said the Court approved a customer product or leasing model; Cloud Innovation said it first learned of the order through AFRINIC's communications and disputed AFRINIC's account. Those are relevant party positions, not adjudicated facts. The missing application materials and later hearing record are the evidence needed to decide the conflict.

The accountability test for the current authority structure

Heng Lu's Note 20 separates executable power from symbolic narrative. The injunction sits in the first category. It is a court command with legal consequence. AFRINIC's claim that the command confirms its institutional view sits in the second until a court actually adopts that reasoning.

Notes 28 and 34 add the functional boundary: registries keep records; courts and sovereign authorities enforce law. Mixing those layers lets the registry act as recordkeeper, narrator and practical market enforcer at once. Note 52 supplies the accountability test: consequence-heavy power must meet reason, review, remedy and liability.

The Court's own procedure reflects that discipline. There was a return date. The respondent could contest the order. AFRINIC accepted risk and possible damages exposure. A later application sought review or discharge. Those safeguards are not weaknesses in the judgment. They are why “interim” cannot honestly be edited out of the story.

The purported Board, receiver and those supporting them now face a straightforward disclosure duty. If they endorse the communique's broader claim, they should publish the application, affidavit, annexes, proof and date of service, the 28 May record, Cloud Innovation's response, every extension, and the outcome of the stay-review-discharge application. They should label which statements are AFRINIC arguments and which are judicial holdings.

Until then, the bounded conclusion is firm. AFRINIC obtained real temporary relief against falsely attributing judicial approval to leasing. It did not publish a final court judgment against IPv4 leasing. Turning the first result into the second is not legal clarity. It is registry authority amplified through narrative.

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