Patent ID: 7090128

Claim:
A document distribution system wherein documents are sent to one or more passenger vehicles, each vehicle including an onboard electronic document distribution system having one or more storage units, a plurality of keyboards with at least one of the plurality of keyboards being a credit card reader, the document distribution system comprising: at least one processor that performs the following operations: communicates to each of a plurality of passengers, a plurality of options relating to documents to be viewed; accepts input from each passenger as to what options the passenger has chosen, wherein at least one chosen option identifies a document to be viewed by the passenger; and displays the identified document to the passenger while the passenger is in a seat of the vehicle; a plurality of document publishers; a network operations center that accepts documents in electronic format, converts documents to a common data file format specifically designated for one or more of the passenger vehicles, creates and appends control parameter specifications to each electronic document, which controls access rights for each document, and initiates and monitors distribution of electronic documents to one or more passenger vehicles; a communication network permitting the network operations center to communicate with each of the one or more vehicles; and a mechanism for physical delivery of storage medium to each of the one or more vehicles, wherein the network operations center accepts documents from each of the plurality of publishers and includes at least some of the documents in a set of data files and delivers the set of data files to at least one of the one or more vehicles by way of the network or by physical delivery of storage media.