"ownership" on ancient network assignments?

Hi,

we are currently noticing a dispute of two companies over a 
/16 address range assigned to a predecessor of both of them 
in 1991 (the original company was split some time ago).

We're not a party in this quarrel, but I'm curious about the 
status of a network that was assigned such a (comparatively) 
long time ago. Can someone claim to be legally entitled to own 
this IP address range? What is likely to happen?

A. Bochmann

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