"When" means "during" rather than "in response to" (Ex parte Karaoguz)

Ex parte Karaoguz
(Appeal 2009-001433; Serial No. 11/093,369; Tech. Center 2600)
Decided: September 21, 2009

The claim limitation at issue was:

a gateway ... capable of transmitting at least a portion of the collected information to a first one of the plurality of access devices, when the first one of the plurality of access devices is detected to be communicatively coupled to the gateway;

The Board made it clear that in this claim, "when" does not mean "in response to":

It appears that the Examiner has interpreted claim 1 to require that in response to the access device being communicatively coupled to the gateway, the gateway transmits a portion of the information to the device. We do not find that the claim is so limited.

Although the Board did not state this, it seems clear that they interpreted "when" as "while":  gateway transmits while the device is detected as communicatively coupled. Here's what the Board said:

Rather, the claim merely requires that when a device is communicatively coupled to the gateway the gateway transmits a portion of the information. It appears to us that Choi does teach this feature. Choi teaches that the gateway provides a web page, which provides information to a user, and that page may be accessed by devices in the home or remote to the home. Fact 6. Thus, with Choi’s system, if a device that can access the web-page is turned on, within the range of the gateway, and requests the web page, it will receive a portion of the collected information. (i.e. the gateway will transmit a portion of the collected information to the device). Fact 6.

Here's how I interpret the Board's explanation. Turn the device on within range of the gateway. After power up, the device requests a web page. The gateway transmits the web page. That means the gateway transmits the web page during the time ("when") the device is communicatively coupled, as claimed.

This decision shows that "when" was not a good choice of words to claim a condition. In two previous posts have discussed the phrase "in response to". My most recent post in this subject highlights a case (Ex parte Jerding) in which the Board interpreted "in response to X, Y" as defining an action Y that is conditional on X. An earlier post highlights another case (Ex parte Golivinsky) which reached a different result: the Board interpreted "in response to X, Y" as meaning the claimed action Y followed X.