PTAB

IPR2018-00245

TicketNetwork Inc v. CEATS Inc

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: System and Method for Selecting and Reserving Seats Using a Touch Screen Device
  • Brief Description: The ’178 patent relates to computer-implemented systems and methods for interactively selecting and reserving seats at a venue, such as an airplane or concert hall. The invention’s purported novelty centers on receiving a user’s seat selection via a touch screen input on an interactive seating map displayed on a personal computing device over a network.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-20 are obvious over the Expedia Reviews in view of Clough and Wilder.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Expedia Reviews (a collection of 1997 articles describing the Expedia.com website), Clough (Patent 5,379,057), and Wilder (Patent 5,408,417).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of these references taught all limitations of the challenged claims. The Expedia Reviews were presented as disclosing the foundational system: a web-based, interactive airline seat selection platform where users on personal computers could view a graphical seat map and select seats using a mouse click. Petitioner asserted that during prosecution, the examiner allowed the claims of the ’178 patent based on the specific feature of receiving seat selection data from a touch screen input on a personal computing device, which the examiner found was not disclosed in the prior art of record.

      To bridge this gap, Petitioner relied on two additional references. Wilder, which was considered by the examiner, taught an automated ticketing kiosk that used a touch screen for seat selection but was distinguished as a fixed terminal, not a personal computer. Crucially, Petitioner introduced Clough, which was not before the examiner, for its teaching of a portable computer (a personal computing device) with an integrated touch-sensitive screen for remote data collection. Petitioner contended that the Expedia Reviews provided the base system, Wilder provided the known concept of using a touch screen for ticketing, and Clough provided the obvious implementation of that touch screen on the exact type of device claimed—a personal computer.

    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine the teachings of these references through a simple substitution of known elements to achieve predictable results. A POSITA familiar with the Expedia system would have been motivated to replace the mouse-click input with the touch screen input taught by Wilder and Clough. This modification was presented as an obvious design choice to improve the system’s usability, as touch screens were a well-known alternative input method with recognized advantages in user-friendliness and speed. Implementing this known input technology on a personal computer (per Clough) instead of a fixed kiosk (per Wilder) was argued to be an obvious step to provide portability and convenience to the user.

    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in making this combination. The argument was based on the premise that integrating a known input technology (touch screen) with a known online system (Expedia’s platform) on a standard platform (personal computer) involved no new or unpredictable technical challenges. All constituent elements were well-understood, and their combination would have functioned as expected.

    • Key Aspects: The petition emphasized that the examiner's specific reason for allowance—the combination of a touch screen input with a personal computing device for seat selection—is precisely what the proposed combination of prior art teaches. The addition of Clough, which was not considered during prosecution, was positioned as the key element that directly addressed and rendered obvious the purportedly novel feature of the ’178 patent.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests the institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and the cancellation of claims 1-20 of the ’178 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.