Google has donated 79 patents to a list of 'safe' designs to accelerate the pace of computing innovation.

The open patent pledge has gained the support of technological pioneers as it should ultimately lead to better products and services at lower cost. The patents handed over by Google in its latest round of information sharing cover a range of software used to operate data centres including middleware, distributed storage management, distributed database management and alarm monitoring.

The release of the patents was announced in a blog post by Google’s senior patent counsel Duane Valz. The global search-engine giant said they acquired the patents from IBM and CA Technologies, two companies that were among the first to make open source patent pledges, and which will continue to contribute heavily, they say.

Google took the moral high ground over companies such as Apple when it made a pledge earlier this year not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specific patents, unless Google was sued first.

The official announcement and more information on the Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge are available here.