The terms “associated with” and “related to” on their face are not limited to a direct one-to-one correspondence. Here, for example, a sensor claimed as being “associated with” an individual light fixture and producing a signal “related to” the light level of that fixture was found to read on sensors that monitored multiple fixtures. It may therefore be best to use a stronger relationship descriptor, at least in a dependent claim, for elements where a one-to-one correspondence may be important or otherwise advantageous.
Background / Facts: The application on appeal here from rejection at the PTO describes and claims a system of high-intensity light fixtures—as might be used to light a sports stadium—with each fixture associated with its own sensor that detects the light level, thereby allowing intensity adjustments at each fixture in order to achieve “substantially uniform light outputs.” The claim language describes each sensor as being “associated with an individual fixture” and “capable of producing a signal related to the light level being produced.”
Issue(s): Whether the claims require each light sensor to be placed at “the point of [the light’s] origin” so as to measure only the “output[] of [each] individual lamp[]” as espoused by the applicant.
Holding(s): No. “[The applicant’s proffered] reading departs from the ‘broadest reasonable construction in light of the specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art’—the approach used by the Board during prosecution. … The two highlighted phrases are quite reasonably read as covering sensors that are somewhat removed from the particular lamp or fixture and that measure the level of light that is a blend of outputs from more than one lamp or fixture. And we have been shown no recitation in the patent disclosure or prosecution history that compels the narrow interpretation [the applicant] advances.”