Appeal No. 1999-1793
Application 08/161,798
subbands (col. 5, lines 58-64), the characteristics of which are
shown in the table of figure 3. The bandwidths W(p) of the subbands
approximately correspond to the critical bandwidths of the human
auditory system in the respective frequency ranges (col. 6,
lines 40-46). Thus, we find Veldhuis discloses "decomposing the
digital signals into spectral components" and "a step for dividing at
least one frequency interval into a plurality of frequency-units."
The claim limitation of "at least one frequency interval" reads on
the frequency interval corresponding to the upper subbands (13#p#26)
in Veldhuis. Thus, Appellants' arguments that the lower subbands do
not use adaptive bit allocation and that their invention allows for
the possibility of assigning and allocating bits to the whole
frequency spectrum (e.g., Br10-13) are not persuasive.
Claim 5 recites "a step for obtaining a representative of each
frequency-unit obtained." The term "representative" is not expressly
defined in the specification. However, from the statement "the
variance or a representative within a defined frequency interval as
an accurate representation of the signals in the interval"
(specification, p. 5), we interpret "representative" to mean a
"characteristic representative of the signal." Veldhuis discloses a
signal buffer 6(p) for each subband and a level detector 7(p)
- 5 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007