How vague can your patent be? Vagueness strategies in U.S. patents

Patent claims defi ne the protection scope of the intellectual property sought by the patent applicant or patentee. Broad claims are valuable as they can describe more expansive rights to the invention. Therefore, if these claims are too broad a potential infringer will more easily argue against them. But if the claims are too narrow the scope of protection of the intellectual property is greatly reduced. Patent claims have to be, on the one hand, determinate and precise enough and, on the other hand, as inclusive as possible. Therefore patent applicants must fi nd a balance in the broadness of the scope defi ned by their claims. This balance can be achieved by the choice of words with a convenient degree of semantic indeterminacy, by the choice of modifi ers or other strategies. In fact, vagueness in patent claims is a desirable characteristic for such documents. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of a corpus of 350 U.S. patents provides a promising starting point to understand the linguistic instruments used to achieve the balance between property claim scope and precision of property description. To conclude, some issues relating vagueness and pragmatics are suggested as a line of further research

The Development, Documentation, and Applications of the Integrated Environmental, Health, and Safety Index (IEHS)

During the conceptual design phase of industrial processes, there is a need to make quick decisions on the screening and selection of alternatives. These decisions are typically based on techno-economic criteria and sometimes include environmental aspects. Safety considerations usually come as an afterthought. A designer charged with developing the conceptual process flowsheet for a new plant often cannot access the information needed for conventional safety analysis due to the lack of sufficiently detailed design data and time restraints. This is heightened in operations without extensive historical data such as processes that are small, produce specialty chemicals, or use novel processes. Given the significant gains that can accrue by including safety considerations during the conceptual design phases, there is a critical need to develop systematic approaches that aid the process designer in incorporating safety during the early stages of process design. This thesis turns a literature index into a process flowsheet development tool. The revised index is referred to as the Integrated Environmental, Health, and Safety index (IEHS). It accommodates the nature of early process synthesis and conceptual design work. It also accounts for categories not directly covered before such as maintainability, process control and overall process structure. The main focus of IEHS is to provide the designer with insights about the consequences of making design decisions and to provide a rational basis for the incorporation of safety issues on par with design methodologies and economic metrics. Through the use of IEHS, process designs failing to meet quantitative risk limits are eliminated from further consideration or revised to meet the desired limits early enough in the design work process. A case study is solved for the design of a dimethyl ether process to illustrate the applicability of IEHS in the early design phase

A fuzzy AHP multi-criteria decision-making approach applied to combined cooling, heating and power production systems

Most of the real-world multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems contain a mixture of quantitative and qualitative criteria; therefore quantitative MCDM methods are inadequate for handling this type of decision problems. In this paper, a MCDM method based on the Fuzzy Sets Theory and on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is proposed. This method incorporates a number of perspectives on how to approach the fuzzy MCDM problem, as follows: (1) combining quantitative and qualitative criteria (2) expressing criteria pair-wise comparison in linguistic terms and performance of the alternative on each criterion in linguistic terms or exact values when criterion is qualitative or quantitative, respectively, (3) converting all the assessments into trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, (4) using the difference minimization method to calculate the local weight of criteria, employing the algebraic operations of fuzzy numbers based on the concept of α-cuts, (4) calculating the global weight of criteria and the global performance of each alternative using geometric mean and the weighted sum, respectively, (5) using the centroid method to rank the alternatives. Finally, an illustrative example on evaluation of several combined cooling, heat and power production systems is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology

A comparative outline for quantifying risk ratings in occupational health and safety risk assessment

The concept of risk assessment has been introduced as an examination of safety in the workplace to enable assessments as to whether sufficient precautions have been taken or if more should be done to prevent potential harm. Hazardous industries have faced serious fatalities related to work, workplaces, and workers as a consequence of their high-risk processes. Therefore, in this work, a novel and comparative methodology for quantifying risk ratings in occupational health and safety risk assessment is proposed. A 5 x 5 risk matrix is initially determined, and the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) method is then applied to rank identified hazards. As a novelty to the knowledge, two parameters of the 5 x 5 matrix method, likelihood and severity, are subjectively assessed by occupational health and safety experts, and then importance levels for these parameters are determined using the Pythagorean fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (PFAHP). In the proposed approach, analysts use linguistic terms and Pythagorean fuzzy sets, which provide greater independence in their evaluations. An outline that enables comparison of the results of this study with the circumcenter of centroids method and the fuzzy AHP-fuzzy VIKOR integrated method in quantifying risk ratings is also provided. In order to present the practicality of this work, a case study in an underground copper and zinc mine is carried out. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.No sponso

Layer of protection analysis applied to ammonia refrigeration systems

Ammonia refrigeration systems are widely used in industry. Demand of these systems is expected to increase due to the advantages of ammonia as refrigerant and because ammonia is considered a green refrigerant. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the risks in existing and future ammonia refrigeration systems to ensure their safety. LOPA (Layer of Protection Analysis) is one of the best ways to estimate the risk. It provides quantified risk results with less effort and time than other methods. LOPA analyses one cause-consequence scenario per time. It requires failure data and PFD (Probability of Failure on Demand) of the independent protection layers available to prevent the scenario. Complete application of LOPA requires the estimation of the severity of the consequences and the mitigated frequency of the initiating event for risk calculations. Especially in existing ammonia refrigeration systems, information to develop LOPA is sometimes scarce and uncertain. In these cases, the analysis relies on expert opinion to determine the values of the variables required for risk estimation. Fuzzy Logic has demonstrated to be useful in this situation allowing the construction of expert systems. Based on fuzzy logic, the LOPA method was adapted to represent the knowledge available in standards and good industry practices for ammonia refrigeration. Fuzzy inference systems were developed for severity and risk calculation. Severity fuzzy inference system uses the number of life threatening injuries or deaths, number of injuries and type of medical attention required to calculate the severity risk index. Frequency of the mitigated scenario is calculated using generic data for the initiating event frequency and PFD of the independent protection layers. Finally, the risk fuzzy inference system uses the frequency and severity values obtained to determine the risk of the scenario. The methodology was applied to four scenarios. Risk indexes were calculated and compared with the traditional approach and risk decisions were made. In conclusion, the fuzzy logic LOPA method provides good approximations of the risk for ammonia refrigeration systems. The technique can be useful for risk assessment of existing ammonia refrigeration systems

Evaluation of combined heat and power (CHP) systems using fuzzy shannon entropy and fuzzy TOPSIS

Combined heat and power (CHP) or cogeneration can play a strategic role in addressing environmental issues and climate change. CHP systems require less fuel than separate heat and power systems in order to produce the same amount of energy saving primary energy, improving the security of the supply. Because less fuel is combusted, greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants are reduced. If we are to consider the CHP system as "sustainable", we must include in its assessment not only energetic performance but also environmental and economic aspects, presenting a multicriteria issue. The purpose of the paper is to apply a fuzzy multicriteria methodology to the assessment of five CHP commercial technologies. Specifically, the combination of the fuzzy Shannon's entropy and the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach will be tested for this purpose. Shannon's entropy concept, using interval data such as the α-cut, is a particularly suitable technique for assigning weights to criteria — it does not require a decision-making (DM) to assign a weight to the criteria. To rank the proposed alternatives, a fuzzy TOPSIS method has been applied. It is based on the principle that the chosen alternative should be as close as possible to the positive ideal solution and be as far as possible from the negative ideal solution. The proposed approach provides a useful technical–scientific decision-making tool that can effectively support, in a consistent and transparent way, the assessment of various CHP technologies from a sustainable point of view