Ex parte BOWATER et al. - Page 2




                 Appeal No. 1998-2577                                                                                                                   
                 Application No. 08/594,054                                                                                                             



                 This is a decision on appeal from the final rejection of                                                                               
                 claims 1, 3 through 14  and 16 through 26, all claims pending1                                                                                              
                 in this application.                                                                                                                   
                 The invention relates to processing a stored digitized                                                                                 
                 audio signal to vary the playback speed of the signal without                                                                          
                 changing the pitch or causing any distortion.  In particular,                                                                          
                 the playback speed is varied by deleting or repeating selected                                                                         
                 encoded blocks of the digitized audio signal.                                                                                          
                 Representative independent claim 1 is reproduced as                                                                                    
                 follows:                                                                                                                               
                 1.     A method for varying the speed of playback of a                                                                                 
                 stored audio signal encoded as a sequence of digitised audio                                                                           
                 data blocks using a history based encoding technique, the                                                                              
                 audio data blocks each corresponding to a fixed time period of                                                                         
                 the audio signal, comprising the steps of                                                                                              
                 accessing a stored set of digitised audio data blocks                                                                                  
                 processing said set of digitised audio data blocks in encoded                                                                          
                 form by omitting or repeating complete selected digitised                                                                              
                 audio data blocks in accordance with a desired variation in                                                                            
                 speed, and                                                                                                                             



                          1The Examiner correctly notes that the copy of claim 14                                                                       
                 included in the appendix to the brief is missing the phrase                                                                            
                 "audio output from said decoded digitized audio data blocks."                                                                          

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