Appeal 2007-1315
Application 09/828,437
1 type of parameters any travel service provider would collect, such as is done by
2 Jones (FF 05).
3 Therefore, we find the Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive.
4
5 Claims 6 and 18
6 The Appellants separately argue claims 6 and 18 together, which call for airline
7 pricing without regard to seating availability in the listing.
8 The Examiner found that Jones discloses showing available flights and their
9 times and flights, although neither Jones nor Among pricing information without
10 regard to availability of seating. However, the Examiner concluded that it would
11 have been obvious to one of ordinary skill to provide pricing information without
12 regard to airfare so as to allow a user to obtain a sense of the market prior to
13 beginning the process of making travel arrangements or planning for a vacation.
14 The Examiner further found the data in the listing to be non-functional descriptive
15 data, and this descriptive data would not distinguish the claimed invention from the
16 prior art in terms of patentability, (Answer 15-16).
17 The Appellants contend that the combination of Jones and Among fails to
18 disclose the claim feature of the pricing information associated with the one or
19 more categories of airfare being provided without regard to availability of seating,
20 as admitted by the Examiner. The Appellants also take issue with the Examiner’s
21 finding that the data in the listing is determined to be non-functional descriptive
22 data, not functionally related to the steps or method. (Br. 30.)
23 As we concluded above, no patentable weight is afforded the contents of the
24 listing, and so these limitations will not define the claims over the art applied. But
26
Page: Previous 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013