Actually, ARM designs microprocessors, physical IP, and related technology and software.

FORBES: The Long ARM Of The Law Of Portfolio Gains

Other tools, such as Maxmind, would help find out the physical location of a particular IP address, he said.

BBC: Email trail helped FBI crack Petraeus case

And the first rumblings of a rights-management system for controlling the sharing of physical things are appearing: The IP-hoarding firm Intellectual Ventures received a patent in October for a 3-D printer feature that blocks the creation of verboten objects.

FORBES: Inside Thingiverse, The Radically Open Website Powering The 3D Printing Movement

Through another court order (that I brought by myself), in February of 2012, I subpoenaed Earthlink and Wholesale Internet for the physical street addresses the and client names that were associated with the IP addresses in question (see Exhibit C).

FORBES: How To Bait and Catch The Anonymous Person Harassing You On The Internet

Being able to find a business by name rather than having to look up its address is the physical-world equivalent of typing in a domain name versus having to remember an IP address.

ENGADGET: Switched On: Dash delivers open roads, open questions (Part 1)

Security solutions based on physical infrastructure, and policy expressed in terms of a particular device, the corporate PC, an IP address, network port, or application protocol are becoming useless in a mobile, borderless world.

FORBES: Going Mobile: Security in the Age of Ubiquity

Some copyright owners in Europe and the US are using IP addresses gathered by monitoring firms to apply for court orders obliging internet service providers to hand over the physical addresses associated with them.

BBC: BitTorrent study finds most file-sharers are monitored