A recent flurry of deals and disputes involving technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon.com and Apple demonstrates the growing role of patents in brokering peace and establishing battle lines in an industry that relies on innovation for competitive advantage.

“There’s more awareness of patents as an asset class,” said John Amster, a former executive at Intellectual Ventures who now heads up RPX, a San Francisco, California-based firm that buys up patents on behalf of technology firms. “Companies are understanding the value of patent aggregation.”

Some of the most recent developments:

• A broad patent cross-licensing agreement announced between Microsoft and Amazon on Feb. 22 gives the companies new opportunities to collaborate while promising to keep them out of the courtroom, even as they increasingly find themselves in competition.

• A licensing pact between patent firm Intellectual Ventures and Verizon gave the wireless giant extra ammunition in a dispute with TiVo.

• Apple this week sued smart-phone maker HTC Corp., which makes devices for Google and Microsoft, alleging that it violated Apple’s patents on technologies behind its popular iPhone.

• Microsoft last year was forced to make adjustments in its widely used Office productivity suite to remove technology determined by a federal court to violate the patents of i4i.

Patent deals are being fueled by rising recognition that the industry is too complex for a pure do-it-yourself strategy. Especially as economic constraints put a lid on R&D budgets, patent experts say companies are seeing value in broad licensing deals that allow them to avoid costly litigation while taking advantage of each other’s technologies, and to alleviate concerns about running afoul of each other’s patents.

“No company can build everything on its own anymore,” said Marshall Phelps, the industry veteran credited with developing IBM’s patent portfolio into a multibillion-dollar business before leading Microsoft’s efforts to establish its own patent licensing business. “If that’s no longer the case, then the highest and best use of your intellectual property is to, in effect, trade it with other companies that have intellectual property, and to use the best of both.”