Patent trolling has become a popular sport lately as companies form to exploiting difficult-to-research patents which may overlap with the IP of startups.

Now Vole is offering ‘uncapped indemnification coverage’, including coverage against open-source implementations of entities such as Hadoop, which forms the basis of Azure’s HD Insight product.

Microsoft will make available to Azure clients 10,000 patents that it owns with a view towards warding off patent lawsuits for Azure-based software. It is also promising that future transfer patents will never result in action against clients who take advantage of the scheme.

Vole has quoted a Boston consulting group report which moans about a 22 percent rise in IP lawsuits relating to cloud products over the last five years in the US.

Trolls have apparently been buying up cloud patents over the same period. Their job had been made easier because academic and research patents which lead to cloud innovations has made it easier for trolling companies to pick up easy patent properties from cash-strapped universities.

Microsoft corporate vice president Julia White commented in an interview: “They haven’t had years to build up that patent portfolio,” and continued, “Cloud innovation is far too important to be stifled by lawsuits”.