The blogosphere has been all aflutter with the analysis that Tom Kemp at Centrify has done of the draft protocol-patent mapping provided by Microsoft for its Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) and the Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP). Many people find it interesting and
surprising that 80% of the published protocols may not be covered by patents,
apparently assuming that the low percentage of patent coverage correlates to a
low importance of these patents. Frankly, I don’t see how anyone can be surprised by the fact that much of Microsoft’s creative work involves refining previous mechanisms. The fact that one out of five of the server protocols involves new inventions seems quite significant, but we have nothing
to compare that number to, since no other company has given the public such a
transparent accounting of its own patent coverage.
In any event, the actual number or percentage of patents that cover the
Microsoft server protocols is not important; what is important is whether there
is even one patent that reflects an important innovation. So the question remains, do the Microsoft
patents reflect any important innovations?
After just looking at the first patent listed in Kemp’s spreadsheet mapping Microsoft protocols to patents, U.S. Patent number 5,974,416, I would have to say that the answer is yes.
Patent # 5,974,416 describes “a method of creating a tabular data
stream for sending rows of data between client and server,” and relates to
Microsoft’s protocol for Remote Data Services. With this protocol, Microsoft provides a way
for a programmer to create an “object” that encapsulates the data queried from
databases, allowing the data to be displayed, manipulated, and updated without
requiring the programmer to implement and manage all the details of how to do
this. A similar functionality is provided in Java’s sql package. This
actually saves programmers quite a bit of work – I found both the Microsoft and
Java encapsulation mechanisms quite useful when I was a developer.
This type of encapsulation allows businesses
to create cheaper custom database applications, which is an important benefit,
the kind we want patent systems to facilitate.
If the rest of the
patents listed by Microsoft provide innovations that are nearly as useful as
just this first one, then the body of work represented by this 20% of
interoperability protocols is impressive indeed. But really, the anyone-but-Microsoft cheerleaders knew that. Tom Kemp built on a useful mapping that developers can use to stay clear of patent issues if they choose – and that’s a real service. Much of the commentary, on the other hand, is a partisan effort to try to twist any information however benign to reflect poorly on others – I suppose that’s keeping with the mode of the election season we’re in.