As investment in data center infrastructure accelerates, intellectual property (IP) risk is becoming an increasingly important consideration for developers, operators, investors, and cloud providers. While data center projects are often viewed through the lenses of real estate, power, financing, and construction, patent holders are now focusing on the technologies deployed within these facilities and the ways in which they are integrated and operated.
In a recent Insight, partners Erik Hawes, Manita Rawat, and Jason Gettleman discuss how the rapid growth of data centers is creating new IP and litigation risks across the digital infrastructure ecosystem. The authors explain that modern data centers bring together a dense concentration of technologies, including cooling and energy systems, server and processing infrastructure, networking technologies, software platforms, and AI-related tools, that are often sourced from multiple vendors and integrated into a single operational environment.
The Insight highlights how data center operators can face patent exposure even when using third-party technologies and why traditional contractual protections, including vendor indemnities, may not always provide complete protection. The authors also examine the challenges created by complex supply chains, multivendor technology stacks, and industry initiatives such as the Open Compute Project, which can introduce additional considerations around licensing, contribution rights, and interoperability.
Among the key takeaways: IP risk should be evaluated early in the project lifecycle alongside site selection, energy strategy, construction planning, and commercial negotiations. Developers and operators should understand not only who owns the technologies being deployed but also how those technologies interact across the broader facility and how risk is allocated among project participants.
As data centers continually scale in sophistication, IP issues are becoming more central to project development, financing, operations, and long-term value preservation.