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Microsoft Patenting Sparklines?

This kind of boggles the mind. One of the new features in Excel 2010 is sparklines -- small in-cell charts that are often presented in groups.

The concept was invented and named by Edward Tufte. However, Microsoft is seeking a patent: Sparklines in the Grid.

A sparkline is associated with a location in a document to provide a visual representation of one or more data values included in the document. The sparkline is associated with a data source within the document including the one or more data values. The sparkline is generated by generating the visual representation based on the one or more data values with a matrix of points to be presented at the associated location in the document. The sparkline is presented at the associated location in the document. The sparkline is configured to be regenerated when one or more of the data values in the data source change.

In July, one the Microsoft patent authors (San Radakovitz) wrote this on a Microsoft blog: Sparklines in Excel:

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

At his Web site, Edward Tufte asks:

What should I do?