microsoft patents and sparklines

On a blog of Fabrice Rimlinger it was pointed out that a patent claim has been filed by Microsoft for a rather general class of sparklines. Sparklines is a term which was proposed by Edward Tufte in his book “beautiful evidence” as

“Intense, Simple, Word-Sized Graphics”

(citation from Edward Tufte website)

So it seems I have to pay now to Microsoft for talking about
sparkline

does anyone know – do they take regular checks ?

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