AFRINIC Cloud Innovation Ltd loses appeal against AFRINIC

TL;DR — AFRINIC has won. A dramatic legal battle that started in March of last year, can be probably said to be concluded now.

Ish Sookun

Ish Sookun

1 min read

The CEO of AFRINIC, Eddy Kayihura, in an email addressed to the Resource Members and the AFRINIC Community, informed that Cloud Innovation Ltd lost its appeal against the ruling that the Judge in Chambers delivered in July 2021 where Cloud Innovation's application for Interim Injunction was set aside.

As a reminder, in March 2021, AFRINIC sent Cloud Innovation Ltd a letter informing the latter that it was in breach of the Registration Service Agreement. A legal battle followed, which left AFRINIC unable to access its bank accounts for a few months. AFRINIC won part of the battle when the Judge in Chambers had set aside Cloud Innovation Ltd's application for injunctive relief.

Cloud Innovation Ltd had appealed against the ruling.

Following Cloud Innovation Ltd's appeal against the July 2021 ruling, the Supreme Court of Mauritius had ordered that AFRINIC reinstates Cloud Innovation Ltd's membership pending a decision. In an email addressed to the community on 15 July 2021, Eddy Kayihura stated that his team was « in the process of implementing the reversal action » to comply with the Supreme Court order.

Now that Cloud Innovation has lost this part of the battle too, the community will be eager to see what AFRINIC does next.

In fact, as I write this blog post, Dewole Ajao, an active participant in the AFRINIC Community Discuss and former Co-Chair of the Policy Development Working Group (PDWG), reacted to Eddy Kayihura's email.

I quote him:

Thanks for the update which you seem to be celebrating (if I read you correctly). For those like me who are legalese-challenged, does this mean that Cloud Innovation's resources are now effectively revoked? If I remember correctly, all of this started with a notice that resources were to be revoked at a certain date on the basis of non-compliance with the RSA, right?

Indeed, many community members will wait to see how long does AFRINIC take to revert back whatever « reversal process » they had implemented in July of last year.