Amazon and Microsoft Strike Patent Deal

Microsoft issued an announcement on Monday stating that it had signed a "patent cross-license" deal with Amazon.com regarding Amazon's Kindle e-reader device and the "use of Linux-based servers."

Amazon will pay Microsoft an unspecified amount of money to settle intellectual property (IP) matters.

Microsoft's announcement stated that the Kindle electronic book-reading device relies on "both open source and Amazon's proprietary software components," plus it uses Amazon's Linux-based servers.

Microsoft elicited controversy among open source Linux advocates when it announced a deal with Novell in November of 2006 over IP used in Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. In May of 2007, Microsoft was accused of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt over Linux licensing after a Microsoft executive claimed that Linux violated 235 of Microsoft's patents.

Until this latest announcement with Amazon, Microsoft had been relatively quiet about alleged IP violations concerning Linux. To that end, Microsoft signed a deal in October of 2009 with Red Hat concerning Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on each other's virtualization platforms. No licensing or compensation agreements were announced with that deal.

The other day Microsoft announced that it had signed a deal with Amazon over licensing.


It appears that it got a promise that it would not be sued by Microsoft over the amount of Linux gear it used.

For a long time Microsoft has insisted that there were bits of Linux that used its patents.

However, buried in the small print of the press release about the deal was a set of technologies covered by the agreement including the Kindle, which employs open source software, and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers. It is done to an outfit which is big enough to lose a lot of cash if Microsoft sues it. It will most likely say “OK” because licencing its technology to Microsoft does not cost it anything and it buys piece of mind for its future Linux projects.

It also means that Microsoft can send a message to the software world.

What surprises us is that the Open Source community has not kicked up more of a stink about it.

Jim Zemlin, of the Linux Foundation, wrote of the deal that most technology companies have invested heavily in patents and that a cross-licensing agreement is a non-news event.

Tag Blogalaxia: amazon microsoft software kindle patent strike license deal