Google has added 79 patents to the list of patents for which it pledges not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software, unless first attacked.
The new patents cover software used to operate data centers, including middleware, distributed storage and database management, and alarm monitoring, wrote Duane Valz, the company’s senior patent counsel in a blog post Thursday.
Google announced in March its Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge to “encourage pro-competitive, defensive uses of patents to support open-source innovation.” It added at the time 10 patents to its list of specified patents covered under the pledge.
The first 10 patents were related to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets developed at Google. The company promised in March that more patents in other technologies would be added to the list.
“We hope the OPN Pledge will serve as a model for the industry, and we’re encouraging other patent holders to adopt the pledge or a similar initiative,” the company said at the time.
Google’s Motorola Mobility unit is engaged in a number of patent disputes. As part of a settlement with the Department of Justice, Google agreed not to seek injunctions against products that infringe standard-essential patents, without first negotiating a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) rate for licensing the patent.
The 79 patents were acquired by Google from IBM and CA Technologies.