Microsoft Azure IP Advantage

2017: Announcement

In February 2017, Microsoft announced the Azure user protection program against patent trolls. The software giant protects against the prosecution of customers who use open source technologies in Azure services.

Users of the Microsft Azure cloud platform in the event of patent proceedings will be able to rely on 10,000 Microsoft patents, as if they were their intellectual property. In total, the American corporation has about 65 thousand patents registered in different countries of the world (data as of February 2017).

Microsoft Office

The new initiative, called Microsoft Azure IP Advantage, will be able to take advantage of customers who spend at least $1,000 a month at Azure. Such a majority, assure Microsoft.

Microsoft Azure IP Advantage provides unlimited legal costs and legal assistance for customers developing cloud applications based on open source technologies used in Azure.

The protection will also extend to non-commercial developments used by Azure. In particular, we are talking about Hadoop.months technology, on the basis of which the Azure HD Insight service is built.

We want software developers to be able to focus on code writing and commercial companies to respond quickly to their customers' needs without fear of legal action, Microsoft said.

The new program, first of all, is aimed at companies connected to Azure that do not work in the IT industry (for example, automakers) and therefore do not have patents in the field of mobile or cloud technologies.

They haven't had so many years to create a patent portfolio like ours. Innovation in cloud computing is too important to be overwhelmed by lawsuits, "said Microsoft Corporate Vice President Julia White[1]

Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond called Microsoft Azure IP Advantage the first initiative of its kind and noted that lawsuits related to the use of intellectual property based on open cloud technologies do not happen often, but the corporation's new program will help it attract more customers, especially those who do not want to take risks.

Patent trolls are firms that themselves do not conduct any productive activities, but own a wide portfolio of all kinds of patents, which they use to prosecute other commercial companies in court, in the hope of receiving compensation or patent payments. It is especially difficult in this sense for innovative companies faced with the fact that their new technologies are allegedly described in some patents dating back to the last century. Descriptions can be blurred and not specific, but the amount that the patent holder demands through the court turns out to be quite specific.

"Patent trolls" are a problem that is already taking on a macroeconomic scale, - comments Ksenia Shilak, a representative of Sec-Consult. - Almost any innovative companies sooner or later risk facing lawsuits of structures parasitizing on someone else's intellectual property. The idea of ​ ​ patent law is to protect and maintain technological progress, but in today's conditions, "patent trolls" distort this idea to the exact opposite. Microsoft's move in this regard is welcome.

See also

• Software Licensing
• Stop Online Piracy Act
• Pirate Software in Russia (Unlicensed Software)
• Software Asset Management (SAM)

Notes