Microsoft introduces Shared Innovation Initiative

Source: Microsoft blog post. Shared innovation.

New Shared Innovation Principles from Microsoft include:

- Respect for ownership of existing technology.

-  Assuring customer ownership of new patents and design rights. 

- Support for open source. 

- Guidelines on licensing back to Microsoft. 

- Portability. 

- Transparency and clarity. 

- Future refinement.

Microsoft’s Shared Innovation Initiative debuted on 4 April to address questions around co-creation. In a blog post Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, explained that the initiative will clarify co-created technology and intellectual property (IP) issues in a world where every company is a software company.

"The initiative is designed to strike a healthy balance that will both help our customers grow their business through technology and enable Microsoft to continue to improve its platform products," Smith said.

"In short, it strikes a balance where we and our customers can each focus on what we do best, working together with trust and confidence that we will help each other become more successful."

One example of how things work is the 365mc Hospital in South Korea, which is improving the precision and safety of surgeries through a motion-tracking artificial intelligence (AI) application co-created with Microsoft. Sensors collected data on how surgeons' hands moved during operations - more than 2 billion movements - and then used machine learning to identify patterns that could serve as a “GPS for surgeons.” 

"This AI-powered system guides surgeons during operations and sends warnings and proposes countermeasures when it anticipates possible missteps, helping surgeons master skills while reducing patient risk. In addition to applying this technology to its own business, the hospital plans to now sell software and a training programme to other hospitals, creating a new line of business and revenue stream," Smith said. 

As such collaboration becomes more common, there will be questions about who owns the patents and resulting intellectual property. "There is growing concern that without an approach that ensures customers’ own key patents to their new solutions, tech companies will use the knowledge to enter their customers’ market and compete against them – perhaps even using the IP that customers helped create," Smith noted.

Microsoft's Shared Innovation Principles address such questions and cover seven areas:

Respect for ownership of existing technology. 

Microsoft and the partner each own the existing technology and IP that they bring to the table. As they work with customers, they will ensure that they similarly will each own the improvements made to their respective technologies that result from the collaboration.

Assuring customer ownership of new patents and design rights. 

Microsoft's customers, rather than Microsoft, will own any patents and industrial design rights that result from the shared innovation work.

"Among other things, this means that Microsoft will cooperate in the filing of any patent applications resulting from the new invention work. This also means that Microsoft will assign to the customer all of the rights, titles and interest in the patents we create together," Smith said.

Support for open source. 
If the partnership results in new source code and Microsoft's customers would like to contribute any code they are licensed to use to an open source project, Microsoft will work with them accordingly.

"We’re finding that our customers often want to release deliverables under an open source license on GitHub as part of our engagements, and we frequently work with them to do so," Smith said.

Microsoft has contributed code to the Linux kernel and helped advance R, the statistical programming language used by data science experts. Over 40% of the virtual machines running on Azure today use Linux. Some of Microsoft's existing platform technology is produced in part with open source code, and Microsoft is bringing many of its flagship technologies to Linux, including .NET, Visual Studio and SQL Server, Smith shared.

Licensing back to Microsoft. 
Microsoft will receive a licence back to any patents and design rights in the new technology that results from the shared innovation, but the licence will be limited to improving its platform technologies.

Microsoft's platforms include existing and future versions of Azure, Azure Services (e.g., Cognitive Services), Office 365, Windows, Dynamics, Enterprise Mobility and Management, Cortana, Bing, Xbox, Xbox Live, HoloLens, Systems of Intelligence (e.g., Customer Care Intelligence, Market Intelligence, Sales Intelligence), and code and tools developed by or on behalf of Microsoft that are intended to provide technical assistance to customers in their respective businesses, Smith said.

Portability. 
Customers can port the new, shared innovations they own to other platforms.

"We’re committed to retaining our customers’ business by offering better performance and value than anyone else, not by locking customers in to something they no longer want to use," Smith said.

Transparency and clarity. 
Microsoft will work with customers to ensure transparency and clarity on all IP issues as the shared innovation project moves forward.

"We’re committed to well-organized and defined processes that ensure that our customers always have clear and complete information. We’ll also each appoint executive sponsors to help address quickly any questions or issues that may arise during shared innovation work," Smith said.

Learning and improvement. 
Microsoft will continue to learn from the work and use lessons learned to improve the shared innovation work further.

"While we’re confident that these principles represent an important step forward, it’s hard to believe that they represent the last step we’ll ever need to take. We look forward to listening to and learning with our customers as we do more of this important work. We look forward to using what we learn to make future improvements to these principles," Smith concluded.