According to a Monday statement by the software biggie Microsoft, the company has signed a patent cross-licensing agreement with Web retailer Amazon. com – a deal in which Amazon will pay an undisclosed amount of money.

As per the terms of the Microsoft-Amazon deal, the two companies will gain access to each other’s patent portfolio – comprising a wide array of products and technology, including Amazon’s increasingly popular Kindle e-book reader.

Microsoft also elaborated that the arrangement worked out with Amazon will protect it from patent lawsuits against the Kindle, which includes some open-source software constituents, as well as against its use of Linux-based servers – more so as, going by Microsoft’s past assertions, Linux and other open-source software infringe on hundreds of its technology patents.

Microsoft, which has entered into as many as 600 licensing agreements since 2002, has refrained from disclosing its own products that are covered under the ‘confidential’ deal with Amazon.

Microsoft has specified that its broad IP licensing program – which includes patent deals with vendors Novell, LG Electronics and Fuji Xerox, essentially to incorporate coverage for their use of Linux and open source – makes its research and development efforts and its escalating patent portfolio easily accessible by other companies.