The new ammunition for huge corporations would be intellectual property, and owning relevant patents to your particular niche market or industry is the ideal way to roll in the big bucks. Apple knows this, and has filed its fair share of patents in the past, but their latest one discovered (albeit being filed in August 2010) involved a smarter and slicker Apple-inspired music playlist, with the patent application covering “an electronic device” (surely this is a Mac or another iOS-powered device) that is capable of locating and interpreting beats from a preceding AAC, MP3 or WMA file, followed by crossfading them into beats found in the following track. Can you say virtual DJ here that lives in your computer or portable device? It would remain to be seen whether Apple’s patent would kick off as a workable idea, but considering their reach in the music industry, it does make much sense. What do you think of such a patent – will other companies such as Cowon and perhaps even Microsoft, work on a similar output, or will it strictly remain in Apple’s own domain?