Yes there is. It's called the SWIP [0] process and if you buy an IP block, you are required to submit SWIP forms to register the reallocation with ARIN or RIPE. [1]
Of course, this only applies when the ownership of the range is changing. If you're using a hosting provider who owns the block, and another customer on the block was a spammer, then you're right -- there is no way to transfer. But you also don't really own the IP range in that case.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Whois_Project
[1] https://www.arin.net/resources/request/reassignments.html
That said, providers generally do keep records of which IP is associated with which customer at which time. That information is just not publicly available in real time.
This is really upsetting. The imbalance of power is especially pronounced here as they don't really care whether you deliver you mail or not - you do. You're totally at their mercy. That's why lots of people nowadays say "it's too much hurdle to maintain my own e-mail server, I'll just use some service" - and in this way they give even more power to Google and the rest.
We'll wake up one day and realize e-mail is no longer as free as it used to be, but it will be too late.
I'm dreading the day that I have to switch my personal mail server's IP address.
(important disclaimer: it's been a while since I had to deal with un-blacklisting, so maybe things have changed since?)
We're talking single emails, in reply, from whitelisted addresses, being blocked because they come from (paraphrasing) "a server associated with a server whose IP address was previously a spam source".
That's a shared hosting experience. Mind you we were trying to send a flood of perhaps 10 emails a month to ourselves, so you can understand why they'd ignore our whitelisting./s
Because the provider says: "If you are on a network that is known for allowing email marketing to occur, you may be out of luck as well. If you aren't doing email marketing consider a different network."[0] I haven't yet gone through and actually contacted them especially since my IP is included in their "worst" category[1]. It's also the only place I've had a problem with so far, so not worth the hassle yet.
[0] http://www.mipspace.com/contact.php [1] http://www.mipspace.com/ratings.php
IPV4 addresses in 'known bad' ranges can be totally benign, I know this because I've been the owner/steward of a whole pile of such addresses over the years. Typically the hosting providers where our stuff was colocated would be the likes of Leaseweb and Dynamic Pipe which had a lot of porn customers and spammers as customers.
It would not be rare at all to be blocked either on entire class C's or ports from those blocks of addresses in spite of never having had interaction with certain parties before.
Kudos to the people at Spamhaus who never blocked us and went out of their way to ensure they only hit the boxes of the spammers with surgical precision.
Finally, 'distant past behavior' is what caused me to have to jump through all kinds of hoops to reclaim the IP address of my present day mail server.
There is no set protocol to register a change of tenancy for an IP address and I'm pretty sure if such a protocol did exist that spammers would abuse it but it is super annoying to have to go begging cap in hand to the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft for clemency when you've done nothing wrong (and to be ignored...).