Microsoft extends its patent protection program for cloud customers in China

Early this year, Microsoft announced the Azure IP Advantage program, a program through which Microsoft will use its patent portfolio to help protect their cloud customers from patent suits. If sued, eligible Azure customers can acquire one of 10,000 patents that Microsoft will make available to help counter assert against an aggressor. Microsoft today announced that they are expanding Azure IP Advantage program to cloud customers in China from October 1, 2017.

Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program will include the following benefits:

• Our best-in-industry intellectual property protection with uncapped indemnification coverage will now also cover any open source technology that powers Microsoft Azure services, such as Hadoop used for Azure HD Insight.
• We will make 10,000 Microsoft patents available to customers that use Azure services for the sole purpose of enabling them to better defend themselves against patent lawsuits against their services that run on top of Azure. These patents are broadly representative of Microsoft’s overall patent portfolio and are the result of years of cutting-edge innovation by our best engineers around the world.
• We are pledging to Azure customers that if Microsoft transfers patents in the future to non-practicing entities, they can never be asserted against them. We do not have a practice of making such transfers, but we have learned that this is an extra protection that many customers value.

Check the video below to learn more about this program,

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TechInsights says that, “Microsoft Azure IP Advantage outranks competitors Oracle, Google, Amazon and VMware’s portfolios.” None of Microsoft’s Azure competitors offer a similar package of offerings. The fact that these tools are available for free to eligible Azure customers makes it all the more compelling.

Learn more about this announcement here.