Digital transformation is spurring new models for collaborative innovation across industries. We’re committed to bringing our Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio to our customers and developers in ways that help foster a healthy open source ecosystem and help our customers innovate with confidence. This includes approaches that support cross-licensing, and empowering, like-minded communities.

In October 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), a community formed to help protect the Linux ecosystem and developers working with Linux-based open source workloads from patent-related threats.

We also joined the LOT Network (LOT), a community formed to help protect participating companies from patent assertions by non-practicing entities (NPEs). Microsoft is not in the business of transferring patents to NPEs, but in the unlikely event that we do, we commit to license our patents for free to other members of LOT.

What we see today is a dynamic landscape of IP and open innovation models and an evolution of IP licensing and sharing models. Microsoft is committed to building up IP protections for the Linux ecosystem and, more broadly, using our IP to help protect our customers and developers.