Apparently Microsoft filed for a patent on this in May of 2008. It's fascinating to me that Edward Tufte isn't mentioned anywhere in the patent application.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0282325.html

Interestingly, that's the same month that someone else started posting mockups for the feature:

http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

I wonder where that leaves these companies:

http://www.bonavistasystems.com/Products_SparkLiner_Overview...

http://www.bissantz.com/sparkmaker/index_en.asp

I was planning to use them in a web app. I wonder where that leaves ... everybody?

Will Tufte have to license his own invention for a future book or app? It would be odd, considering that Microsoft names Tufte as the inventor on the posted page.

"For Excel 2010 we’ve implemented sparklines, “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”, as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence. "

It's still just an application, so there's a chance that it will be rejected or limited in scope before it's approved. You may also be able to design around their specific claims.

That's very cool.

It's nice to see there's still innovation going on in the spreadsheet arena. I used to think that Lotus 1-2-3 v1.01a was all that I'd even need (much as WordPerfect 4.2 seemed to be the natural end-point of word processing), but it's nice to be surprised from time to time with something new.

Hmm, those are useful. When can we expect them in OO.o?

now. http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice...