By R. Paul Zeineddin ( January 24, 2018, 1:05 PM EST) -- Over the last decade, cloud services have seen explosive growth in all areas of information technology.[1] Analysts now estimate that by 2025 two-thirds of data center computing will use public cloud services.[2] Businesses across industries have adopted cloud infrastructure and tools to spur rapid innovation, creating new products and business models. But these cloud-driven breakthroughs come with potential legal exposure that includes not only the cloud service technologies but the specific product or service offered by the cloud customers. When using cloud-based tools, in-house legal teams and developers need to be aware of the risk of patent litigation and the extent to which the various cloud providers can help mitigate these risks. Cloud customers' choices in selecting particular services and how they deploy them can leave them exposed to liability for open source technologies that are buried deep within their providers' offerings. Certain providers also provide mechanisms to help cloud customers even when the customer's own technology is implicated....