On November 10, 2003 we received a letter from Navitaire,
current owner of the Open Skies product, in which the CEO puts
us "on notice" that "some" of our customer websites,
"especially the first page of the booking process, bear marked
similarities" to a circa 1997 interface in which Navitaire
claim they hold unspecified rights. We have never heard of
this interface.
The letter is quite incredible, and we have displayed it
for public viewing within the News section of our website.
From a legal standpoint we could ignore this letter. Its
insinuations are groundless. But no matter how baseless, the
legal threats of a big company can have an impact on a smaller
company.
- We are spending an inordinate amount of time dealing
with this unsubstantiated "concern,"
- We have received questions from potential partners about
the impact of having to fend off frivolous actions,
- We anticipate some prospects may be discouraged to
contact us.
We believe this is the point of Navitaire's threat, to
interfere with our continuing success, which is increasingly
in direct competition with the Open Skies product.
For the record, we were in business before the introduction
of the Open Skies system. The AirKiosk system was developed
and available prior to both Hewlett Packard's purchase of Open
Skies and Navitaire's later acquisition of the system from HP.
We have never before heard from Open Skies or Navitaire. The
only change in the landscape is that, within recent months, we
have talked to Open Skies users curious about migrating to our
system.
There is no indication at all from Navitaire about which of
our customers or what specific aspect of the self-booking
process they question. For those less familiar with the
self-booking process, the first page offers a form to select a
"From City," "To City," "Dates of Travel" and "Number of
Passengers."
In how many ways can one ask these
questions?
Beyond the generic processes of any Internet "first booking
page," the AirKiosk system offers the most advanced features
in the industry, including real-time low fare search and
online changes. The AirKiosk system is the only system which
offers an entire reservations solution on a single,
Internet-based platform. All of our user interfaces -- whether
for consumers, travel agents, airline control staff or ground
handling agents -- were independently developed on an
architectural platform completely unique to the AirKiosk
system.
We do not like being bullied, we do not appreciate
innuendos against our customers, and we are well prepared to
continue our unique and advanced developments for the benefit
of our customers and all interested travel vendors.
Novak Niketic
President, Sutra, Inc.
