On Thursday, Google announced that 79 more patents will be part of its Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. The announcement builds upon Google’s March OPN commitment to refrain from suing users of designated patents, in an attempt to support open-source collaboration and innovation. The key proviso, however, is that Google reserves the right to sue if it is attacked first. The 79 patents relate to data center operations such as “middleware, distributed storage management, distributed database management, and alarm monitoring” whereas the first 10 patents that Google introduced to OPN had to do with MapReduce. Although the patents included in OPN thus far focus on back-end technologies, Google intends to additionally include software for “consumer products that people use every day” in OPN going forward, according to a company blog post. Google’s commitment to OPN represents a gesture to work toward building a tech culture marked by fewer instances of aggressive patent litigation although the move is unlikely to have a significant impact unless other tech companies make similar commitments to non-offensive patent litigation.
Cloud Computing Today 