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." 2Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007