View this article at: http://dev.macnn.com/articles/08/01/31/aac.hierarchy.patents
Thursday, Jan 31, 2008 6:15pm

Patents: AAC audio, hierarc...

The US Patent and Trademark Office today published 11 of Apple's patent applications. Among the 11, a patent regarding AAC audio bit allocation, as well as one pertaining to hierarchical menus stand out. Apple has presented a concept for perceptual audio encoding, a bit allocation technique that is designed to reduce the size of a file by finding a perfect balance of quality versus compression. While Apple is developing the process to apply it to AAC, it could also be applied to MP3, AC-3, and WMA media formats.

Apple also patented a technique for nesting items hierarchically, which can be applied to pop up or drop down menus.