Microsoft makes patent claim for sparklines

Re:Microsoft makes patent claim for sparklines by ganley on Thursday November 19, 2009 @10:28AM (#950375)

IANAL, but this seems ludicrous on its face. The patent app was filed in 2008, and Bissantz has prior art back to at least 2006 (see, e.g., http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/sparklines-in-excel-si...).

However, my half-assed OpenOffice version (http://joeganley.com/2008/10/sparklines-in-openoffice-calc.h...) postdates the patent app. It would amuse me if I were in violation of a Microsoft patent.

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Re:Microsoft makes patent claim for sparklines by jacobolus on Thursday November 19, 2009 @05:02PM (#951236)

The reason that the link is to Tufte’s mention of this is that he coined the term and explored the idea at least as far back as 2004. See http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

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