Cloud computing represents one of the technology sector's most promising subcategories. This week, Google opened a portion of its intellectual property portfolio in hopes of protecting the space against the frivolous litigation that has, at times, engulfed application development and mobile hardware manufacturing segments.

The company has tagged 79 additional patents for inclusion in its Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge. The initiative stipulates that any party can make use of the technologies described in those patents so long as they agree not to pursue offensive litigation against Google.

This latest batch of intellectual assets is by no means a collection of trivial innovations. Several concern big data processing - a white-hot topic in today's research and development labs.

According to GigaOM, experts concede that the program may not be the absolute answer to curbing patent litigation rates in the technology sector. Companies will likely continue to file legitimate legal proceedings to carve out crucial competitive edges in high-growth product categories. However, this open access model has already paid dividends in the case of software copyrights and can at least close loopholes that could have been exploited by opportunistic parties with little intent to innovate.