Erich Andersen, Microsoft Corp.'s chief intellectual property counsel. Courtesy photo. Erich Andersen, Microsoft Corp.'s chief intellectual property counsel. Courtesy photo.

Microsoft Corp.'s legal team took another step toward increasing cross-industry collaboration Tuesday, releasing data sharing agreement templates to make the process less burdensome.

Lack of a standardized agreement process is one of the “barriers to sharing data” preventing researchers from accessing the wide pool of data they need to build new artificial intelligence tools, a Microsoft representative said Tuesday. Erich Andersen, the Redmond, Washington-based tech company's chief intellectual property counsel, said in an email that it's taken some organizations up to a year to negotiate data sharing agreements.

“Our new agreements are intended to streamline and standardize that process so it's easier for companies to enter into data sharing agreements and more easily unlock the power of their data,” he said.

Andersen shared drafts for an open use of data agreement, computational use of data agreement, and a data use agreement for open AI model development in a LinkedIn post Tuesday.

The drafts address “common data-sharing scenarios,” respectively: one party openly distributing data it owns to a large group; one party openly distributing data based on public information to a large group; and one party sharing private data to another party for the purpose of training artificial intelligence.

Andersen said in an email that the first two agreements “will be able to be used without modification” in some instances, saving time and resources, while the third will still “require some customization for use.”

The legal team will also “build-out additional data sharing agreement templates” in the future, according to Microsoft's website. There are also plans to update the drafts released Tuesday in October after a period of ”community review and input.”

“We are hoping to work very broadly across tech, developers, researchers, academia and business in general to make sure these agreements work as widely as possible,” Andersen said.

Microsoft's call for more data sharing is its legal department's latest push for more external collaboration.

In March, chief legal officer and president Brad Smith called for companies to “work together across the tech sector” to stop the spread of hateful and violent content online, after a video of a shooting at two New Zealand mosques rapidly spread across platforms.

Smith also announced an official collaboration program, Microsoft's Shared Innovation Initiative, in April 2018. The initiative aims to promote collaboration by allowing nontech companies that invent using with Microsoft consultants, engineers or software ownership of patents produced.

“The co-creation of new technology in the world today seldom starts from scratch,” Smith said in a post announcing the launch last year.

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