Appeal No. 2004-1421
Application No. 09/471,674
available to the given member from said given travel service
provider.
By contrast, Flake, the examiner's primary reference,
teaches a centralized system and infrastructure (Figure 1)
wherein a travel agency (12) functions as a central hub,
receiving a travel request from a customer (16), evaluating that
request based on stored data relating to a business entity
profile (18) and an individual customer profile (20),
communicating with one or more travel service providers (14),
receiving data from the various travel service providers
consulted, and subsequently making proposed travel arrangements
and then communicating such arrangements to the customer. As
noted by appellants on page 4 of the reply brief, the Flake
patent does not teach or suggest an interaction over a second
transmission means or data link in which the customer receives a
travel preparation message directly from the computer of a
service provider (14). Thus, the centralized system of Flake
differs markedly from the distributed system required in claims 5
and 10 on appeal. Moreover, the examiner has provided no
explanation as to how or why the system in Flake can in any way
be considered to be an equivalent of the distributed system
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