In a statement, Microsoft said the network was being built using the Quorum blockchain on its Azure cloud computing platform.
The company explained the technology thus: "Blockchain is a ledger that can be added to but not modified, making it very secure. Each entry is secured into blocks of entries, and each new block is linked to the previous one. It is historically known as a core part of the digital currency bitcoin but can be used for any transaction of value."
The network has been created so that owners of intellectual property can track how their IP is used and also how licensing agreements and partnerships help them make money.
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Microsoft said it would look at opening the solution to its other partners to aid them in collecting royalties.
“The scale, complexity and volume of digital rights and royalties transactions makes this a perfect application for blockchains,” said Paul Brody, global innovation leader for blockchain at EY.
“With a blockchain, we can handle the unique nature of each contract between digital rights owners and licensors in a scalable, efficient manner with a verifiable audit trail.
“By deploying this on Azure, we believe this will be highly scalable across thousands of royalties and content partners.”
This is not the first blockchain network to be built atop Azure. In March, British fintech Nivaura launched the first blockchain-based investment product on Azure.
Microsoft has also been involved in the Coco Framework for companies, a blockchain service that can handle more than 1600 transactions per second. This was in August 2017.
