Appeal No. 2005-0823
Application No. 10/300,895 Page 26
ticket. First, a customer calls a travel agent to
purchase a ticket for air travel. (Step S1) Next, the
agent makes a reservation for the customer. (Step S2)
The customer then purchases the ticket from the agent
(Step S3), and a paper or electronic ticket is issued
to the purchaser. (Step S4)
The ticketed transaction is recorded in the GDS
only for validating the reservation. (Step S5)
Reporting cannot occur at this stage due to the format
and information collected by the GDS, so airlines are
not informed of the sale at the time of the sale.
If the end of the weekly reporting cycle has not
been reached (Step S6), then the agent may void the
ticket (Step S7) and the original sale of the ticket to
the airline is never reported to the airline. Since
the airline carrier was never aware of the sale, it
cannot charge a change fee, resulting in a tremendous
loss of potential revenue for the airlines.
It is clear from the Background Of The Invention that travel
agents were voiding tickets for customers before the end of the
reporting period, even though the tickets had been purchased.
In addition, although not found in the Background Of The
Invention, we find that the specification discloses, as
traditional,
“[s]ince travel agencies have traditionally reported
and remitted sales weekly, they have consistently
offered their customers the courtesy of voiding airline
tickets issued in a given week. By voiding airline
tickets in this manner, travel agencies do not report
the original sale to the airlines. Travel agencies
void or change approximately 10% of all airline
tickets, or about 17-19 million tickets annually. Of
all airline tickets issued annually, about 65% are non-
refundable.”
Page: Previous 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007