Microsoft Gives Startups Tech Boost

By David Worthington | Published May 4, 2005, 2:34 PM

Microsoft is betting that its extensive IP portfolio is an intellectual greenhouse that can sow the seeds of entrepreneurship. Wednesday, at a gathering of venture capitalists, Microsoft announced a new program targeting technology startups called Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP) Ventures.

Microsoft IP Ventures will license out twenty different Microsoft technologies from a variety of internal disciplines including artificial intelligence, usability, graphics, security, gaming, multimedia and databases. The number of available technologies will grow in step with the program.

Some of the technologies are projects from Microsoft Research and development efforts, including its "Wallop" social computing portal software. Windows is a prerequisite for many of the technologies to function.

"Our research labs and efforts across the company have created a large portfolio of innovative technologies that extend the reach of personal computing today, with much of it going into Microsoft products," said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. "At any given time, there are hundreds of projects under way at Microsoft. IP Ventures provides yet another vehicle for extending this reach and delivering innovations to customers in a variety of areas."

Microsoft revealed its intention to explore IP licensing in the latter half of 2003. Last month Microsoft signed an intellectual property licensing agreement with Inrix, a Seattle startup, for technology developed by its Windows product team and from Microsoft Research. Inrix will use real-time traffic prediction software to develop custom solutions. Hardware vendors SMC and D-Link have agreed to license Windows Connect Now to simplify the provisioning of wireless networks.

"It makes perfect sense and is a pragmatic thing for Microsoft to do," said Laura DiDio, a senior analyst with Yankee Group. "As we all know there have been calls for Microsoft to open up its APIs and source code. It helps both Microsoft and third parties to license things out; it keeps things civil and is a nice revenue stream."

A complete list of available technologies is available from the IP Ventures Web site.

Comments

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we're semiconductor engineers not businessmen.
how can you help some startup guys like us??

ed,
www.mipv.com
www.microsoftipventure.com

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Microsoft is sharing...
about time they share something more interesting then windows ME :-)

anyway it'll help startup companies get on top of their game quicker.

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"Sharing the wealth" is a fallacious Marxist concept, because there is no such thing as a fixed amount of wealth.

Therefore, you don't empoverish those who work by "sharing" (AKA "stealing") their wealth. You CREATE more wealth, or offer/provide/sell means to do so - just like MS is doing here.

It's the economy, stupid!

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You can share anything.
Over time, the expression, "share the wealth" has taken on different connotations.
Capitalism is one of many possible economic systems.
Das Kapital was written in 1867, when many human beings (Europeans included) were considered capital property of other human beings-- you fool!

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I can buy a bag of peanuts and my friend could say "share the wealth"...meaning nothing more then if i would share some peanuts with him... like "m1m2z1" says it has many diffrent meanings nowadays then what u are trying to make of it...

why reinvent the wheel... ms has the stuff these startups need... usually startups have to work from the bottom up... working with ms will give them the serious boost they need... hey it might cost them money... but in the end whatever these startups are working on is probably being made to make money as well...
and it also costs ms in r&d

billy gates isnt that stupid, when it comes to making money he knows what to do...

microsoft develops technologies they would like to use... some of it never gets used... some of it does... why not resell/borrow :-) whatever is hot and whatever is "hard to get to" to these startup companies... so they can get finished developing whatever they are developing earlier and then they can start selling their stuff and get money coming in quicker.
this in return gives microsoft more revenues and the product out there contains ms technology...
which in return gets their name out as well...free advertising... which in return will help ms themselves sell more stuff...

and if something flops they won't have to worry about it.

""Sharing the wealth" is a fallacious Marxist concept""... man u got some serious issues...

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we're semiconductor engineers not businessmen.
how can you help some startup guys like us??

ed,
www.mipv.com
www.microsoftipventure.com

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M1M2something and Mr "Sharing the Bag of Peanuts"/The Ancestor:

Okay guys, I love the incoherent jokes. But now, let's get serious shall we?

>> http://www.moneyweb.co.u...s/politecon/wealth.html

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I read your post... i have to say pretty interesting...

some things make sense in a way and some don't..
it seems like we are trying to make sense of a total random design...

I have lived in 3 diffrent countries now... countries in north america, south america... and europe...
and from what i have seen wealth is decided by random, there is no gameplan in place which decides whose life is going to turn out more blessed...

For example... oil... we are forking out huge ammounts of money for gas these days...our country wont run without oil...
and yet... i live in a state where i know there is plenty of oil being pulled up every day...
all these lame excuses are being made to cover the high gas prices...

If the us is forking over all this money to foreign countries for oil.. why don't we allready have fuell cell vehicles... and all that goed stuff...
(i know you would try reason behind this that the wealthy control that)

Last summer gas prices here were 1.60...went up to 2.03 this summer...
2.03 is high.. but when the price was 2.35 and came back to 2.03 we all were clapping because man 2.03 is cheaper then 2.35... and yet.. we are paying way to much compared to last year..

shows you how random wealth is...
at times we feel wealthier because we paid less for something which we are actually paying more for...

anyway we can go on into this for hours...

Here is a Q... am i stealing from someone if i were to throw away the food on my plate that i didn't eat... Someone who desperatly could have used the food i threw away...
Am i sharing my wealth with him if i were to give it to him?

yeah i know it sounds stupid but that is the same reasoning found in the article..

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