It seems, according to Michael Kaplan, that he was fired from Microsoft for taking a photo with a personal camera of a framed plaque of a patent certificate with his name on it where the patent number was too visible. That is some horrid garbage.
Having gone through the corporate patent game myself it’s not something I would ever recommend.
His blog post said "The second one was after I was granted a patent that I honestly believed never should have been issued." If he posted the photo of the patent in an article where he simultaneously made that remark, that combination would be extremely damning evidence in any patent trial and could lead to the invalidation of the patent.
Although, on re-reading his statement, the firing wasn't the taking a picture of a patent, but including some ("infamous") art in another blog post.
The "infamous art" was a red screen of death from a beta copy of Windows Longhorn. Apparently the blog post was in the middle of the negative news cycle about Longhorn and his posting the RSOD didn't help.
First to note you can easily find all patents with Microsoft as applicant and Michael Kaplan as inventor, eg via Espacenet.
So, it's possible the "frame" is the issue.
Suppose a patent was issued without Kaplan listed as inventor, or with others listed who did not have a role. Then a frame saying "thanks to $people for their [sole] effort on this project" could become part of a lawsuit (not necessarily in USA) for the right to be named as inventor; in UK for example a significant contribution can require that an employee is reasonably compensated. That can be worth $USD millions (eg recent case 'Shanks v Unilever and others'). Based on this even just the wall the frame is on saying "significant contributions" or something might make a court case work that otherwise wouldn't.
I very much doubt that's the reason, but it gives me pause that a missing detail might explain the whole thing. Kaplan wouldn't even need to be aware of it.
It could also be something as simple as the company wanting an excuse to fire him, and "photos of any materials associated with patents is a firable offence" being in his contract.
My reading of it is that he got in trouble for blogging about a patent that, in his words, "never should have been issued," but in a general way that didn't name the patent. The picture he ran with the blog included the patent number, which someone else looked up, probably kicking up a stink, and his manager took that as a blog post critical of Microsoft. That's a lot of reading between the lines on my part, though, so who knows.
Well it's not being critical of MS that is the problem, but admitting that the patent is worthless which can cause significant (unnecessary) damage/complications.
He also had multiple sclerosis, so this is a heavy charge and I don't know anything, but I start to wonder if someone had some cruel ulterior motive related to that. (Insurance costs? Need to accommodate the illness?)
I did not know him and he did not know me, but when I worked at Microsoft I would see him around campus. Small story, I remember one day in the building 10 cafeteria he asked me to hand him a bag of jalapeño potato chips he could not reach in his IBOT thing. Seemed like a nice guy. I later read in his final blog posts that he had a fairly eccentric personal life.
