Hmmm I smell a shareholder lawsuit...
Lets get this straight. If there is value in IP (Intelectual Property) and at the time of filing a patent, the "inventor" is a Microsoft employee, then why wasn't the patent filed via Microsoft?
In short, this conversion of IP to a non Microsoft entity would be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit since the IP should belong to Microsoft and the value of the patent should be Microsoft's.
Not that I'm pro-microsoft, it just seems that we're seeing theft by conversion and the shareholder is being left out in the cold.