I think the issue is that it's unclear what was actually sold to Lee (possibly just a domain name and a website), because the IRC servers themselves are loaned to the network and are run by volunteers. And when the sale happened, it was downplayed to the other staff members so they believed something not quite the same as what really happened during the sale.

The question is really... what is an IRC network, and what constitutes ownership of it? If all the people who own and run the IRC servers themselves change their banner from Freenode to Baznode, and tell people to start connecting to irc.baznode.com instead, then perhaps the entity that owns freenode.com doesn't really own an IRC network?

(I know that's not what happened, as Freenode-the-IRC-network is still running as-is, but just presenting it here given that it could happen based on how the servers are run.)