Hi,
I am following patent 6,914,453 by IBM to write claims.

I would like to ask another question:
What is the difference between 'providing' and 'applying' in
a patent claim area for electronic circuit?

In the above patent, it writes:
1. A method ...
providing a clock input to the logic circuits;
providing one or more static signal inputs to the logic circuit; <--
generating one or more dynamic signal inputs ...
applying the one or more dynamic signal input to the circuit;
....
4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of
applying one or more static signal inputs to the logic circuit.

>From the above descriptions, I am confused about why claim 4
repeats a step that has already been described, but insead of
using 'providing', it uses 'applying' this time.

Thank you.

Weng