Microsoft to help cloud customers with patent litigation

Microsoft has revealed plans to use its patent portfolio to help protect cloud customers from patent litigation.

In a blog post, Brad Smith, president and chief legal officer of Microsoft, announced the new programme, called Microsoft Azure IP Advantage.

“One challenge that technology leaders such as Microsoft have long addressed is the risk of patent infringement. We have over two decades of experience and a broad legal infrastructure designed to manage these risks,” he said.

He explained that cloud-based economic opportunity is enormous but that it’s important to address the growing risk of intellectual property lawsuits in the cloud.

According to Boston Consulting Group, a business consulting firm, there has been a 22% rise in cloud-based IP lawsuits over the last five years in the US, said Smith.

The programme will offer IP protection with uncapped indemnification coverage, which will now also cover any open source technology that powers Microsoft Azure services.

Microsoft Azure is the company’s cloud computing platform.

Microsoft will also make 10,000 of its patents available to Azure customers for the “sole purpose of enabling them to better defend themselves against patent lawsuits” filed against “their services that run on top of Azure”.

The company has also pledged that if it transfers patents to non-practising entities in the future, the patents can never be asserted against Azure customers.

“We do not have a practice of making such transfers, but we have learned that this is an extra protection that many customers value,” said Smith.

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