Microsoft Applies For Patent On Tufte's Sparklines 175
jenkin sear writes "Data visualization guru Edward Tufte developed Sparklines, a great way to display condensed data as an inline graphic. Excel's new version has incorporated the design element — and Microsoft has applied for a patent on them — without so much as a by-your-leave from Tufte."
Obvious bad patent (Score:3, Insightful)
The patent is obviously bad. As the summary states, there is plenty of prior art. If you read the patent, it's also trivial - it's just making graphs smaller.
Will the USPTO reject it?
Maybe.
But even if they do, we also need to ask:
Will anyone at Microsoft be fined or imprisoned for applying for this bogus patent?
Unfortunately, not.
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fuck you in the neck.
Only works if OP has had his larynx removed.
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I have patented the 'placement of an orifice below the chin but above the shoulder for the purposes of sexual gratification'. Please cease and desist you potentially infringing suggestions immediately.
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It would certainly help with the epidemic of bogus patents, if those exaggerating or being deceptive on applications (such as claiming to have invented a graphical design while doing so much as acknowledging [msdn.com] that someone else invented the design) would lead to some serious justice.
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I wouldn't imprison them. I'd just fine them 50% of the gross worth. They'd only try to fool the patent office once.
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Then again, if you can't be absolutely one hundred percent certain that you're the first, then maybe you shouldn't apply for or be able to get a monopoly?
But basically it's one of those issues that is practically irresolvable with an all-or-nothing monopoly system, while it would be easy to resolve in a system constructed as most other wealth redistribution systems. If the patent office simply paid out a certain amount when a patent got used by someone it would be trivial to reduce the amount paid. But how
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Do you remember the controversy surrounding the patents on the telephone? Specifically that Elisha Gray filed his patents the same day as Alexander Graham Bell, and that Bell's patents beat out Gray's because he filed them about an hour earlier?
Sometimes you need to file a patent as soon as you can, because somebody else is working on the same idea. You ca
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And preferably also the somewhat harsh punishment you seem to consider suitable for disagreeing with you.
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If they KNOWINGLY try to defraud the Patent Office by filing for a patent they know is bogus, and it can be proven in court, YES!
And you have some kinky sex fantasies, you might want to get counseling.
Re:Obvious bad patent (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, yes, it *is* a legal requirement that MS not claim to invent what they haven't invented. Unfortunately, this is never enforced with the applicable punishment. (Rarely against individuals. I've never heard of it being enforced against a company.)
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It's not really Microsoft's job to make sure the patent isn't bogus.
Oh, yes, it is. You are supposed to know the field you're filing in. And if you knowingly claim to have invented something when you haven't, it's fraud.
I suggest that we fine the USPTO reviewers who granted the patent.
What have they ever done to you? I suggest we let people sue companies like Microsoft over invalid patents: you file an invalid patent, you're liable for treble damages, based on what licensing revenues you extracted and wh
It's not a patent for Sparklines themselves (Score:5, Informative)
A comment on the blog post [harvard.edu] discussing the feature (to which TFS links) says:
They haven’t tried to patent sparklines, but the use of sparklines in Excel. I.e. the automatic updating of a sparkline embedded in a spreadsheet.
Cue the posts on how obvious and stupid the patent is regardless of this below. Point is, it's not an attempt on something already claimed by someone.
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We're two for two, then.
Re:It's not a patent for Sparklines themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so if I have to push a button to update it, it's not covered? If I don't embed it but, say, just have an external application retrieve data from a spreadsheet, it's not covered?
Yes, I'm hanging on technicalities. But when you look at it closely, the whole software patent BS is about technicalities and not much more. We're talking about (usually) so obvious applications that a 5 year old wouldn't only get the idea but actually say "duh" when you present it to him.
Maybe that would be a good metric. The patent clerc should tell his 5 year old about the idea. If he says "duh", it's not patentable.
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We're talking about (usually) so obvious applications that a 5 year old wouldn't only get the idea but actually say "duh" when you present it to him.
The 5 year may "get" the idea.
That doesn't mean he can produce the machine or device or program that puts the idea to work in new and interesting ways.
To the patent examiner, "obvious" has to mean more than "twenty-twenty hindsight."
If the "sparkline" is so obvious and useful an idea and so easily implemented in your spreadsheet program why isn't it there now
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"If the "sparkline" is so obvious and useful an idea and so easily implemented in your spreadsheet program why isn't it there now?"
Uh...you know, MS has a lock on spreadsheets and they only just thought of it.
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Whether or not the "inventor" is capable of producing a device or program is irrelevant. The question is whether he has invented anything.
This is not an easy question. Inventions are almost always composed of previous inventions. Back when mechanical timepieces were being developed to improve navigation, inventors were constantly tinkering with ways to improve them. These were arrangements of preexisting machine parts like levers and springs. So does *every* distinct mechanical watch design amount to a
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A patent should protect the research done. The idea is to encourage people to show their results and in return they get a time limited exclusive right to use, so others can build on top of their research, instead of having to hide their discoveries from the opposition to protect their investment.
Now please show me what investment, what research, what ROI is to be protected here? It's about monopolizing a trivial idea. It's the exact opposite of what patents are about. Not more research and more development,
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If the "sparkline" is so obvious and useful an idea and so easily implemented in your spreadsheet program why isn't it there now?
It is, it's called a graph. Just don't show the axes and scale it down. Voila. "Sparkline"
Specifically... (Score:3, Informative)
The most general claim of the patent, claim number 1, is:
Re:Specifically... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty interesting. If I remember correctly, there is a LaTeX package for creating sparklines, it uses data that can be embedded in the document, it takes additional parameters that influence the look of the sparkline, and if you change the data a re-run latex, the sparkline changes to reflect the new data, while preserving the look given by the additional parameters. Add to it a system that watches your file and rerun latex every time to see a change in order to generate a preview (I believe I have seen at least one such editor), and it seems to me exactly like what they are describing. I don't quite understand what they mean by "matrix of points proportional to the associated location in the document". If that is the only difference, it really seems too little to deserve a patent.
matrix of points (Score:2)
Big deal. Obvious. S
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"matrix of points proportional to the associated location in the document"
I am pretty sure this means that the sparkline resizes to fit its containing cell(s) when you drag the row/column resize handles at the edges, or some other process causes the cell(s) to be resized.
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Part of what they're trying to patent, is sizing an inline graphic to the same height as your font.
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Part of what they're trying to patent, is sizing an inline graphic to the same height as your font.
Which, if I understand it correctly, is exactly what the sparkline LaTeX package does. And, the package first appeared in 2004.
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[0001]Sparklines are small graphics embedded in a document, such as a text document or a spreadsheet, among the words, numbers, images or other content of the document. Sparklines can be used to graphically represent the content of one or more neighboring cells to provide a visual representation of the data. There are at least two advantages to using sparklines. First, as a "picture paints a thousand words," at a glance, a graph can quickly clearly show values, trends, and similar information. Second, by presenting such a graph in context within the document as opposed to presenting the graph on a separate page or screen, a viewer can more readily appreciate the information represented and/or compare the represented information with that represented by other sparklines.
[0002]In the case of creating sparkline graphs, conventionally, sparklines are created manually, often by simulating the generation of bars with a set of segment fonts that represent parts of bars, lines, or other graph features. Alternatively, a user could manually could select data and manually generate a chart, then try to scale the chart to fit the desired space.
Sparklines are also used as elements of the claims. You can't use them as elements if you're claiming sparklines. This application may or may not have allowable claims, but it is clearly not trying to claim sparklines themselves. It's claiming an improvement on sparklines, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, including withou
Re:It's not a patent for Sparklines themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but taking an existing invention and just taking on "in Excel" or "using a computer" does not make it a new invention. That seems to be the way the USPTO treats those magic words, though.
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Sorry, but taking an existing invention and just taking on "in Excel" or "using a computer" does not make it a new invention. That seems to be the way the USPTO treats those magic words, though.
[Citation needed]
And I mean an actual citation, not another Slashdot article with a misleading headline or summary about how "zomg the patent office allowed a patent for doing x... on the internet!" Find me an issued patent that has "on the internet" or "on a computer" as the sole inventive limitation of a claim.
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This is just a synthesis of existing technologies.
Spreadsheet software already automatically updates graphs and charts based on changes in the spreadsheet.
A sparkline is nothing more than a graph reduced in size and placed in-line within the text.
It follows that a combination of the existing graph technology, with the reduction in size, automatically leads to a sparkline that automatically updates.
Nothing new or novel is accomplished by the combination, so the synthesis isn't an invention.
Re:It's not a patent for Sparklines themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, golly, I've got a very small chart in a spreadsheet. And you're suggesting that I could dynamically update that chart? Wow! I would never have thought of that! Truly a breakthrough that must have taken years of research and is totally worth a patent.
It's a real shame that now that it's patented I'll still be stuck with updating my graphs in OpenOffice by adding pixels with the Gimp after figuring them out with my calculator. I could have saved hours with this !
Damn you Microsoft !
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It's a real shame that now that it's patented
Except it's not. You can file any old thing you want, and it will get published after 18 months, regardless of whether it has a snowball's chance in Hell of actually getting allowed. At the 18 month mark, few applications have even been taken up for examination.
Re:It's not a patent for Sparklines themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just "stupid and obvious", there is plenty of prior art, and it follows from standard engineering principles.
Point is, it's not an attempt on something already claimed by someone.
Yes, it is. If sparklines are public domain and updating graphs dynamically is public domain, then so is the (obvious) combination. The technique belongs to all of us.
So, Microsoft isn't just stealing from another inventor here, they are stealing from all of us, which is even worse.
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Did you look at the link? It links to a website that ... provides the technology to embed Sparklines in Excel.
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That is a load of dingo's kidneys, because nobody had to manually generate sparklines, either. There are already numerous systems which dynamically generate them as needed, for example a drupal module [drupal.org]. This is a ridiculous patent, as completely insane as any "business method" patent, except instead of taking a common business model and adding "on the internet", it's taking an already-accepted practice and adding "in excel". By any reasonable standard, this is a bad patent application.
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Opposing patents (Score:4, Interesting)
This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?
Re:Opposing patents (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?
I am not an attorney (I'm an academic) and this is not legal advice. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this you should consult a competent patent attorney in your jurisdiction. To be clear, when I use the word 'you' in this post I mean the generic 'you,' not you personally.
Here's the basic flowchart. Has the other party filed an application or received a patent? If they've already received a patent, then your primary option is to put the patent into reexamination. To do this requires evidence of a substantial new question of patentability (i.e., something new the examiner or the courts haven't looked at yet) and the payment of a fee. You can either put it into ex parte reexamination, where you submit your evidence and the patent office takes it from there, or you can put it into inter partes reexamination, where the patent office holds a sort of mini trial with you arguing against the patent's validity and the patent owner arguing for it.
If the patent holder is actually demanding a license, threatening a lawsuit, etc, then you may also have the option of filing what's called a declaratory judgment lawsuit where you ask a court to determine whether the patent is valid or not.
If things are still at the application stage, your options are much more limited. You can submit prior art to the patent office, or, in the rare circumstance that you also have a pending patent application on the same invention, then the patent office may declare what's called an interference and try to figure out who invented the claimed invention first.
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This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?
Anyone can cite prior art to the USPTO on a pending application, even anonymously (at your written request). You must provide a written explanation of the pertinency and manner of applying the prior art to at least one claim of the patent. This is completely free. See 35 USC 301.
This being Slashdot, I should remind readers that filing tons of citations of fake prior art in an attempt to bury the Examiner could result in fines and/or jail time.
If the patent has issued, you can request a reexamination. Agai
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This is one of those issues I'd love to hear a real patent attorney weigh in on: If someone files a patent on something you can prove you demonstrated publicly at an earlier date, what are your options? Can you file an opposition to the patent? How does it work?
With the preface that this is not legal advice, I don't represent you, and you should not rely on this as a legal opinion for any reason whatsoever, this post is for entertainment purposes only, and anybody who relies on a random post on Slashdot as legal advice deserves whatever they get, you have several options actually. (Also, note that this isn't the case here. Microsoft is claiming an improvement on sparklines. It may or may not be an allowable patent, but it is not Tufte's invention they are claim
Re:Opposing patents (Score:4, Informative)
Please stop thinking in a FOSS mind frame. In our world, someone asks a question and if we're experienced in that field we don't mind helping out. In the law world, they just lol'd at you (just like every patent attorney who actually read your post) and are currently waiting for you to swipe your credit card details. Now ... Armchair Patent Attorneys ... now that's another matter. I'm sure they're willing to provide an abundance of information.
I'm taking the patent bar in a month and the state bar in three. I'm currently an academic, so naturally part of my job is teaching people about the law, but I'm not going to stop doing so if I'm admitted to the bar. In fact, the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility state that lawyers should help to educate the public about the law (note: they aren't required to, but they should).
Furthermore, there are patent attorneys that have made helpful comments on Slashdot over the years, which stands in direct contradiction to your claim.
Similarly, one of the people I work with is an experienced patent attorney and distinguished law professor. We offered to be the subject of a Slashdot interview about patents, particularly software patents. We felt we'd be a good match since he graduated from MIT and I have bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science. Slashdot didn't take us up on the offer, but at least we tried.
And finally I'll just point out that there are, of course, far more armchair patent attorneys than patent attorneys on Slashdot, so statistically it's hardly surprising that most comments, helpful or otherwise, come from non-experts. It would actually be pretty incredible if every patent-related post or comment on Slashdot was met by a host of patent attorneys chiming in on the issue.
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Model Rules of Professional Responsibility
*facepalm* That should be Model Rules of Professional Conduct, of course. The predecessor to the Model Rules was the Model Code of Professional Responsibility. It's late, and I got the names jumbled up.
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It would actually be pretty incredible if every patent-related post or comment on Slashdot was met by a host of patent attorneys chiming in on the issue.
It would be even more incredible if any patent-related story on /. ever deviated from the rigid kubuki theatre script we inevitably see:
1) One of the editors posts a story with a false headline and misleading summary saying that X has a patent on Y, when Y never appears anywhere in the claims.
2) Commenters chime in with minor variants on the following theme
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Well, I thought that too, so he may need some practice.
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Far be it for me to be pedantic over a +4 Funny post, but he did answer the question [slashdot.org]. At length, and almost an hour before the one you replied to.
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There seems to be an anti-lawyer bias among some here at slashdot, but lawyers are like programmers: some are competent, some not. Some are ethical, some not. Here's a true (albeit slightly offtopic) story that illustrates a good lawyer.
I was drinking with my friend Amy, and as I was too drunk suggested we walk home from the bar. She'd not been there as long as me and offered to drive me. There were two things we didn't know: my tail lights had gone out, and her license had been suspended for non-payment of
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He doesn't have custody; his parents do and the lawyer's not theirs, he's her ex's criminal attorney. They usually don't award custody of the kids to someone who goes to prison for a violent felony, and he beat Amy so badly she had to get reconstructive surgery. The guy's a real wacko from what I understand, a year or so he was on the front page of the SJ-R for a high speed chase through downtown where he hit a few cars, including police cars, almost ran over some cops, when they finally arrested him he had
Obligatory Plunger Analogy (Score:2, Funny)
http://wondermark.com/555/ [wondermark.com]
A Few Points (Score:5, Informative)
First, the actual claims are considerably narrower than just 'any and all uses of sparklines.' The broadest claim is about the use of sparklines in a dynamically updated electronic document. Most of the narrower claims have to do visual effects, the handling of null values in the spreadsheet, etc. This is pretty tame stuff.
Second, this is a newly filed application. The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness, and the claims will likely be narrowed in response. Like most negotiations, the parties start off with extreme positions and work towards compromise.
Third, the patent application already cites Tufte (along with a dozen other pieces of prior art) in the Information Disclosure Statement. In other words: Microsoft gave the patent examiner many important pieces of prior art. The examiner will no doubt find many more. This is all publicly available through the Patent Office's Patent Application Information Retrieval [uspto.gov] system.
Fourth, there is no need for Microsoft to acknowledge Tufte as an inventor on the patent application. Inventorship in the patent context is a legal term of art with a specific meaning. The fact that Microsoft said that Tufte invented sparklines is not the damning piece of evidence many are assuming it is (and recall from point three, above, that Microsoft acknowledged Tufte in its IDS). First, Tufte invented sparklines more than a year before the filing date, so any patentable claims must be a non-obvious improvement upon or use of sparklines, not sparklines themselves. Second, Tufte clearly did not work with the Microsoft inventors, so he cannot be a co-inventor of anything claimed in this application.
Once again non-experts hear hoofbeats and scream 'Zebra Stampede!' The comments on Tufte's site, for example, are a joke, an absolute mess of uninformed speculation. Given the wealth of publicly available information on patents and patent application, the Slashdot editors should do more to fact check these stories before publishing them.
Finally, I'll just tack on that if sparklines are so great and this is all so obvious, then surely there's an open source version that predates this application. Remember, though, that this application was filed on May 7, 2008, so the open source version would need to predate that, preferably (but not necessarily) by a year or more. That would actually be an important piece of prior art.
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The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness [....]
You're saying this about the patent system that approved the patents on swinging on a swing [google.com] and using a laser pointer as a cat toy [google.com]?
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The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness [....]
You're saying this about the patent system that approved the patents on swinging on a swing and using a laser pointer as a cat toy?
I said rejections would be made, not that Microsoft wouldn't be able to overcome them with arguments or amendments. And a quick check shows that rejections were filed in both cases*. Both patents have since been abandoned for failure to pay the maintenance fees, by the way.
* Technically, the record shows that one and two office actions were filed, respectively. Each office a
Re:A Few Points (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2006/02/05/in-cell-charting/ [dailydoseofexcel.com] https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7603152763857688635&postID=4147846911463078558&pli=1 [blogger.com] Note especially comments by Bob Phillips and jon Peltier, in addition to the post by Fabrice on starting in 2005.
Plus, I'm not sure why you emphasize open source implementations that predate it. Did you really mean to imply that if I had a closed source implementation that predated it, it would not be prior art ?
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Well, see, there you go. That's the kind of prior art worth submitting to the patent office, assuming the examiner doesn't find it.
Plus, I'm not sure why you emphasize open source implementations that predate it. Did you really mean to imply that if I had a closed source implementation that predated it, it would not be prior art ?
No, I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just didn't realize Excel was capable of doing in-cell charting through VB or a plug-in, so I assumed a prior art implementation would
Re:A Few Points (Score:4, Interesting)
The wikipedia article lists several, but for all I know they may have appeared there after your post.
As for the patent being of restricted use that is true but ultimately somewhat petty. It is like appending "on a plane" onto a mention of anything.
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There very likely is one. Of course, since it wouldn't have involved attempts to monetise somebody else's shoulders, it might involve actual work (hah) tracking it down.
Patents have become a broken window. The system was intended to reward what was once the rare spark of applied creative genius - it does not scale to cope with billions of educated i
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Second, this is a newly filed application. The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness, and the claims will likely be narrowed in response. Like most negotiations, the parties start off with extreme positions and work towards compromise.
And an invention is obvious if it is merely "the predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions" to produce an expected result. Thanks, KSR [wikipedia.org].
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the Slashdot editors should do more to fact check these stories before publishing them.
They would get fewer page-views from the outraged and ignorant if they did that, which is the only reason I can see for them to persist in posting patent stories with false headlines and misleading summaries.
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The examiner will almost certainly come back with multiple rejections based on obviousness
You have such faith in the Federal Gov't. I wish I were still as naive as you.
This is not naïveté, this is based on personal experience and empirical research. Virtually no patent applications sail through completely unopposed, especially not applications--like this one--that claim combinations of known prior art elements whose combination behaves in a predictable way.
Furthermore, obviousness is probably the most common basis for rejection, especially in a case like this, where the broadest claim
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Speaking of being naive, despite what you think government employees are no where near as lazy as the intellect displayed in your post.
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A quick search shows: http://sparkline.org/ [sparkline.org] which on their sf page have a release dated 2004-11-09
It doesn't anticipate any of the claims, but it may help in an obviousness analysis. Specifically, it doesn't automatically update the sparkline if the data changes and it doesn't automatically adjust the horizontal proportion of the sparkline (at least that I could tell the width is set explicitly by the programmer).
Of course, this is to be expected since it's for the web and not a spreadsheet. I suspect a g
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Re:A Few Points (Score:5, Insightful)
updating a graph is not patentable, spreadsheets already do it.
It's a legal rule that in an obviousness analysis you have to consider the claims as a whole. You can't dissect the claims into individual, obvious elements. It's the combination of all of the elements that must be found obvious.
I'm not saying that dynamically updating sparklines in a spreadsheet isn't obvious, just that the argument you made isn't a legally valid one.
Patent language (Score:2)
As it was explained to me: Patents aren't written so that they're impossible to read. Patents are written so that they're impossible to misread. The enforceable parts must be written very precisely so that a judge knows exactly what they mean without any guesswork. You can think of the judge as a compiler who needs to have each part of the program described in careful language.
The form of patent applications is generally the same as a century ago. That's necessary since they need to maintain a consistent an
I'm not required by law to (Score:2)
to be supposed to understand C++ code.
Yet I can be found to be infringing on a patent I don't understand.
They give him credit on a MS Blog Page (Score:3, Informative)
Over on the Microsoft Excel Team Blog [msdn.com] they even give Edward Tufte credit as the inventor of these sparklines.
Right initial, wrong patent (Score:3, Funny)
Not too impressed. (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't complain about Microsoft's activity when you link to Wikipedia rather than the author's own page on sparklines [edwardtufte.com].
Microsoft didn't patent the sparkline itself (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft patented the use of sparklines as a visualization for a single cell in a grid. In the US patent system, that's night and day different. They recognise Edward Tufte on their website [msdn.com] for his invention of the sparkline: "For Excel 2010 we've implemented sparklines, "intense, simple, word-sized graphics", as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence."
If they would patent the sparkline they would have no claim because of broadly published prior art, under 35 U.S.C. 301: "Any person at any time may cite to the Office in writing prior art consisting of patents or printed publications which that person believes to have a bearing on the patentability of any claim of a particular patent. If the person explains in writing the pertinency and manner of applying such prior art to at least one claim of the patent, the citation of such prior art and the explanation thereof will become a part of the official file of the patent. At the written request of the person citing the prior art, his or her identity will be excluded from the patent file and kept confidential."
Speaking from an information visualisation perspective Microsoft badly implemented sparklines in excel.
Re:Microsoft didn't patent the sparkline itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Blame the system, not M$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, the patent application may not go through, most likely because of the non-obvious/inventive step requirement (even if you find something looking like prior art, it may not look like it to a lawyer).
It doesn't make the (american) patent system any less stupid though:
Microsoft obviously thought the chances were good enough (> 0%) to spend some money filing a patent. It would (almost) be business malpractice if they didn't. Similar patents have been granted before (progress bars, one click shopping et
I've done it... (Score:5, Informative)
I've used sparklines that were updated "automatically" from the values in a database. The software in question tracked the coffee consumption pr. person in the lab, and displayed it using sparklines on a web page (no longer online). The sparkline code was a PHP snippet I found on the net somewhere. There must be plenty of prior art.
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john reisig ...
http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-sparklines/ [ejohn.org]
N///
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I've used sparklines that were updated "automatically" from the values in a database. The software in question tracked the coffee consumption pr. person
You guys went balls to the wall tracking down that asshole that wouldn't contribute for drinking the office coffee, huh?
Emperor's New Clothes (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest is all visual design and auto-updating.
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It's a graph and it's small. I think Tufte's point is that small graphs can communicate information without the cruft of detailed axes, labels and so on.
However, this is not a new idea. It has been reinvented by every 7 year old learning how to draw a graph, to be howled at by a teacher for not adding useful detailed axes, labels and so on.
If you read Tufte's website though you may get the impression that it's a brand new idea.
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I've always thought that Tufte isoverblown. I mean, sparklines - duh, its a small graph without axes. The famous "Napeleon's army" chart is really not any more enlightening or informative than just reading a paragraph or two and looking at some tables of numbers.
Tufte's Real Contribution (Score:2, Insightful)
So what is the argument really about? If these charts are so prevalent, what is Tufte complaining for? As anyone knows who's been following Tufte for as long as I have knows that his real contribution to the field of graphics is his minimalist approach - his crusade to remove the graphics of the world from "chartjunk". His goal is to present the user with the most amount of information using the least amount of features. So, aside from a nifty name, to what exactly is Tufte laying claim? The same coul
Redundant comment - WTF ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't care how small it is, or whether it has axis labels, or what, it's a damned graph (or chart, which ever word you prefer)
Unclear to me.... (Score:2)
I'm honestly not sure what exactly MS is patenting.
This doesn't look like an attemptt to patent sparkilnes, much as the headline wants to paint it that way (and many commenters seem to be playing along). If it were, the claims would describe how to visualize data as a sparkline; instead, right from the very beginning of claim 1, they take the concept of a sparkline as a given.
So it's not sparklines; its the association of a sparline to data and presentation parametesr in an Excel document that they msut be
Re:Why are you surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
How are Sparklines even patentable? They're just a graph, scaled down. I don't even see an innovation here, either my Microsoft or Tufte.
Re:Why are you surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
They're already published and in use, therefore not patentable.... if only the patent office would follow their own damn rules about such things!
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It's a little too early to fault the USPTO, since Microsoft as only applied for the patent, it hasn't been granted yet.
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This appears to be a specific implementation of sparklines in an Excel spreadsheet, not sparklines in general. This blog [dailydoseofexcel.com] talks about this specific implementation (sparklines in Excel) in 2006. This comment on that blog [dailydoseofexcel.com] says that there are three current commercial implementations.
There's even a Sourceforge project for Sparklines in Excel [sourceforge.net], but it appears to have first published in early 2009.
New Patent! (Score:2, Funny)
New Patent! Sparklines ***on the internet***!
I'll make BILLIONS!
Especially since that patent would screw over Office documents like excel with a sparkline being saved as a HTML page...
For my next patent, "Sparklines ***In Open Office***!!!" I tells ya, the opportunities here are endless!
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They are graphs scaled down so that they fit well wit the surrounding test. It's not actually completely simple. As far as I know, Tufte never claimed to invent them, he just described them in his book, and developed some theory on how sparklines should look like to work well. Possibly he also coined the term sparkline, I am not sure about that.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You all need to read the patent. Microsoft is not trying to patent the graphics, layout, colors, etc. What they are claiming is the specific implementation (i.e., the computer component) that ties together the graphic with the data set. TF(P) states:
"A computer-implemented method, comprising: associating a sparkline with a location in a document to provide a visual representation of one or more data values included in the document"
Yes, Tufte did come up with a nifty name, and yes MS is using tha
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You are not the only one.
Re:I'm trying to figure out who's more ridiculous. (Score:2, Informative)
But it's not just a miniature graph line. That is a misconception. If you tried miniaturizing graphs with all the axes information etc., they don't become any easier to interpret. They just become smaller.
A Sparkline has special features, like a dot at the endpoint, and a number representing its value (some also display max and min, which gives you an idea of spread). Looking at a Sparkline immediately gives one a sense of the trends and magnitudes in the graph. You cannot imagine how incredibly useful Spar
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I design sophistcated financial applications for a living, so I know exactly how valuable basic trend indication can be. The point of my post was to highlight that this idea is:
a) not at all novel or original
b) like trying to patent writing
c) did not in any way originate with Tufte
Great idea, not Tufte's, in no way Microsofts, laughable on it's face.
-rt
Do you know who Tufte is? (Score:5, Interesting)
He is not suing Microsoft, and has done absolutely nothing wrong, And your post is a simple troll.
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Sparklines are specifically line graphs included totally in-line with text, without axes. Obviously line graphs as a whole have existed for much longer.
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