Expanding its efforts to capitalize from its intellectual property holdings, Microsoft Corp. has set up a group within its licensing business to sell its technologies to start-ups. Inrix Inc. and Ascender Corp., both of which were founded last year, are among the first takers. Inrix is building a traffic information service with exclusively licensed technologies from Microsoft Research, and Ascender has obtained rights to adapt and sell various Windows fonts developed by Microsoft, according to a Microsoft statement.

The move is part of Microsoft's transformation from a "trade secrets" company to one that shares its intellectual property (IP). In licensing its inventions, the software maker likened itself to institutions such as Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center and Lucent Technologies Inc.'s Bell Laboratories. "They all reached a point in their maturation where they said, 'We've just got a lot of ideas that we are not doing enough with. Why keep them on the shelves? Let's put them out there and allow people to create commercial opportunities,' " said David Kaefer, a director of business development at Microsoft.