A quick post on the use of the term "limitation". While this term has been used a couple of times in the response to the USPTO, adding the phrase "thereby enabling decoupling a speed of said central processing unit from a speed of said input/output interface" to claim 1 does not limit the claim. My understanding is that it was added to clarify the term "independent". The claims 11-20 are essentially claims 1-10 with added clarification.

The change, from an engineering point of view, cannot weaken the "bite" of the 336 because it does not change the claim(s) in any way. Then why did TPL earnestly request to reconsider the original claims? The only reason I can think of is that they cannot argue for any current or future cases filed in California to be transferred to Texas because the claims have been modified.