Appeal No. 2002-0277
Application 08/618,005
The Examiner agrees that Garback does not expressly disclose
a database of travel information being stored before the receipt
of a travel request. See page 4 of the Examiner’s answer. The
Examiner argues that Webber does retrieve information about
available flights and flight segments from a stored database, the
tariff file, before connecting to the computer reservation system
to check on the availability of seats on the flights. See page 7
of the Examiner’s answer.
Upon our review of Webber, we fail to find that Webber
teaches storing inventory information retrieved from a computer
reservation system and determining from the stored inventory
information the lowest cost available travel arrangements as
recited in Appellants’ claims. Webber is attempting to solve the
problem that the computer reservation system such as Apollo does
not indicate that the fares shown on the screen are subject to
restrictions or changes. As a result, travel agencies must
consult a Passenger Tariff Set, which is as big as a big city
telephone book, to verify each flight. See column 1, lines 33
through 65. Webber solves this problem by providing a tariff
file, which stores the information in the Airline Tariff
Publishing Co. (ATPCO) set. See column 3, lines 7 through 40.
For determining potential flights and seat reservations, Webber
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