While the specification here contained specific statements that the elements recited as “corresponding to” one another need not necessarily be equal, the court made clear that even the plain meaning of “corresponding to” does not mean “equal to.” According to the court, correspondence is a “much broader concept” than equation.
Background / Facts: This case concerns digital communication systems with data transceivers capable of receiving multiple, analog, high-speed, serial data signals. Specifically, the asserted patent addresses the problem of sampling at increasingly high data rates by using four parallel data paths, each operating at a quarter of the rate of the incoming data signal. In this regard, the claims recite an interpolator control module adapted to cause the phase interpolator in each receive path (or “receive-lane”) to “rotate the interpolated phase of the sampling signal in the receive-lane at a rate corresponding to a frequency offset between the sampling signal and the data signal.” The accused devices’ “half-rate” architecture uses two parallel data paths that take turns sampling the same data signal. By using two data paths, each data path only needs to sample at half the frequency of the incoming data signal.
Issue(s): Whether the “corresponding to” language limits the claim scope to a full-rate architecture that would not cover the half-rate architecture of the accused device.
Holding(s): No. “The claim language itself does not necessitate that ‘corresponding to’ limits [the claim] to full rate architecture. Indeed the claim does not use language of equation but of correspondence, a much broader concept. Moreover the record does not contain evidence that the patentee acted as his own lexicographer to define ‘corresponding to’ as ‘equal to.’”