Coatings with thicknesses between a few microns and ∼10 μm deposited on a Zircaloy-4 substrate have been studied with the objective to provide a significant reduction in the oxidation-induced ...embrittlement of the nuclear fuel cladding, especially in accidental conditions, such as LOss-of-Coolant-Accident (LOCA) conditions. This paper deals with the early studies carried out at CEA, several years before the Fukushima-Daiishi events, on different types of coatings obtained by a physical vapor deposition process. The studied coatings included ceramic, nitride and metallic multi-layered ones. The results of this screening analysis showed that the first generation of chromium-based coatings exhibited the most promising behavior: good compromise between oxidation resistance and adhesion to the metallic substrate, good fretting resistance and improved resistance to oxidation in steam at high temperature (Design Basis Accident LOCA conditions and slightly beyond).
•Coated zirconium-based alloys are studied as enhanced accident tolerant nuclear fuel claddings for light water reactors.•Several types of PVD coatings, including ceramic nitride and metallic multi-layered materials, are studied.•Chromium coatings are chosen and further developed.•Encouraging results, showing improved behavior both in normal operating and upon DBA-LOCA and slightly beyond conditions.
This study aims to analyze the position of technology-centered companies in complex market dynamics and discover new business opportunities from competitor intelligence. For this, we consider both ...technology and market characteristics in providing competitor intelligence by utilizing patent data as a representative proxy for a firm's technology, and trademark data as an information source for the firm's target goods and services. To analyze the two types of data, a collaborative filtering approach together with portfolio analyses and association mining techniques were adopted. Theoretically, this is one of the earliest attempts to combine patent data and trademark data to investigate corporate strategies. In practice, the research results are expected to be used as a decision criterion to diagnose the economic value that companies can obtain by entering the market, as well as the technological value to be passed onto their customers. Thus, the proposed approach can be useful to support effective technology and business strategies in a firm.
•This study suggests an approach to identify business opportunities from competitor intelligence.•Patent data was used to examine a firm's technological capability and similarity with competitors.•Trademark data was used to investigate a firm's target gods and services.•Collaborative filtering, association mining and text mining were used as main methods.•Business opportunities were identified from market penetration and expansion perspectives.
This study conducts a qualitative analysis of the trademark dispute between Gudang Garam and Gudang Baru concerning brand names and imagery on products, employing a case study method alongside ...normative legal and conceptual approaches. The research delves into the judges' legal considerations and the trademark rights arrangement, focusing on Gudang Garam, a renowned brand. The results establish that Gudang Baru violated the 2016 trademark registration provisions (Article 1 Paragraph (1) of Law N 20 and Article 18 Paragraph (3) of Ministerial Regulation No. 67), prompting the Intellectual Property Office to reject all applications. This case underlines the importance of respecting well-established brands and legal implications for trademark registrations, informing future practices in the field.Highlights: Violation of trademark registration provisions by Gudang Baru. Enforcement of the trademark rights of well-known brand Gudang Garam. Legal implications influencing future trademark registration practices. Keywords: Trademark Dispute, Gudang Garam, Gudang Baru, Trademark Registration, Legal Implications.
When a trademark registered with the Patent and Trademark Office is infringed, section 32 of the Lanham Act provides the trademark registrant the opportunity to seek remedies in federal court. Thanks ...to a broad definition of "registrant," the Act in fact extends standing beyond the registrant herself to her "legal representatives," among others. This Laguage has prompted courts to puzzle over the proper definition of a "legal representative." Through their varying interpretations they have erected unpredictable barriers to standing in the trademark-infringement context. Affording most attention to the Second Circuit's recent decision to deny standing to a claimed legal representative of the Russian Federation, this Note critically examines the different "legal representative" definitions proffered by the courts in light of standing doctrine and the Lanham Act's history. Concluding that the proper "legal representative" definition reflects the goah of the Lanham Act's architects and, to best do so, is bound only by constitutional standing constraints, this Note advocates for a low barrier to third-party standing.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a dangerous poisonous air pollutant that greatly affects humans, plants, animals, and the environment. It is largely present in industrial flue gas, automobile exhaust gas, ...heavy traffic congestion, residences where wood is burned indoors, and natural sources like forest fires. To control it, a catalytic converter is mainly used for CO oxidation that is a feasible technology for the removal of CO. A wide variety of catalysts are used in catalytic converters, such as those based on noble metals, base metals, perovskite, spinel, hopcalite, and monel, among which hopcalite (CuMnOx) catalysts are economical, and show good thermal activity, selectivity and availability for low-temperature CO oxidation. A hopcalite catalyst is prepared by different methods, and preparation parameters such as shaking temperature and pH (8-11.5) have an impact on its activity. This article focuses on summarizing the reaction process of hopcalite catalysts in CO catalytic oxidation and the key factors influencing their activity as follows: appropriate promotors, supports, pre-treatment, and advanced preparation methods in the activity of a hopcalite catalyst toward CO oxidation. CO conversion was considerably higher than 100% at low temperature 50-125 °C with extra O
2
in the feed gas. In fact, hopcalite is known to be an easily available and highly active catalyst for the low-temperature (25 °C) low-cost, complete oxidation of CO. Promoters, supports, pre-treatment, and advanced preparation methods have been added to improve the activity and stability of a hopcalite catalyst in CO oxidation. Also, deactivation generally occurs here
via
the hopcalite catalyst undergoing sintering and fouling during CO oxidation. A change in the hopcalite catalyst might result in an improvement in its overall performance in converters in the future.
Hopcalite catalysts are reviewed showing highly active catalysts for low-temperature, low-cost and complete oxidation of CO.
•A novel method for the assessment of trademark similarity is proposed.•The method blends together visual, semantic and phonetic similarity.•It produces an aggregated score based on the individual ...assessments.•Evaluation using information retrieval measures and human judgment.
Trademarks are intellectual property assets with potentially high reputational value. Their infringement may lead to lost revenue, lower profits and damages to brand reputation. A test normally conducted to check whether a trademark is highly likely to infringe other existing, already registered, trademarks is called a likelihood of confusion test. One of the most influential factors in this test is establishing similarity in appearance, meaning or sound. However, even though the trademark registration process suggests a multi-faceted similarity assessment, relevant research in expert systems mainly focuses on computing individual aspects of similarity between trademarks. Therefore, this paper contributes to the knowledge in this field by proposing a method, which, similar to the way people perceive trademarks, blends together the three fundamental aspects of trademark similarity and produces an aggregated score based on the individual visual, semantic and phonetic assessments. In particular, semantic similarity is a new aspect, which has not been considered by other researchers in approaches aimed at providing decision support in trademark similarity assessment. Another specific scientific contribution of this paper is the innovative integration, using a fuzzy engine, of three independent assessments, which collectively provide a more balanced and human-centered view on potential infringement problems. In addition, the paper introduces the concept of degree of similarity since the line between similar and dissimilar trademarks is not always easy to define especially when dealing with blending three very different assessments. The work described in the paper is evaluated using a database comprising 1400 trademarks compiled from a collection of real legal cases of trademark disputes. The evaluation involved two experiments. The first experiment employed information retrieval measures to test the classification accuracy of the proposed method while the second used human collective opinion to examine correlations between the trademark scoring/rating and the ranking of the proposed method, and human judgment. In the first experiment, the proposed method improved the F-score, precision and accuracy of classification by 12.5%, 35% and 8.3%, respectively, against the best score computed using individual similarity. In the second experiment, the proposed method produced a perfect positive Spearman rank correlation score of 1.00 in the ranking task and a pairwise Pearson correlation score of 0.92 in the rating task. The test of significance conducted on both scores rejected the null hypotheses of the experiment and showed that both scores correlated well with collective human judgment. The combined overall assessment could add value to existing support systems and be beneficial for both trademark examiners and trademark applicants. The method could be further used in addressing recent cyberspace phenomena related to trademark infringement such as customer hijacking and cybersquatting.
•An unusual phenomenon during the oxidation of Cr coatings on Zry4 substrates has been discovered.•A new model based on the diffusion and redox reaction of zirconium and chromia layers has been ...proposed.•Surface morphologies and elemental evolutions in the cross-section of Cr coatings are reported systematically.
Cr coatings deposited on zircaloy-4 substrates have been oxidized in high temperature steam environment from 1000 °C to 1200 °C in this study. It has been reported by many authors that Cr coatings have exhibited excellent oxidation resistance in steam environment because of the formation of a dense and adherent Cr2O3 layer on the surface. However, we have found that in the stage when the Cr coating has completely been oxidized and approached the coating-substrate interface, it is reduced by the Zr substrate and mostly transformed into a metallic Cr layer. The mechanisms of oxidation in this stage is therefore more interesting than generally assumed and we have proposed a new model based on the diffusion and redox reaction between Zr and Cr layers in high temperature steam environment.
The Fukushima-Daiichi accident revealed that the zirconium fuel claddings have the significant safety risk of hydrogen detonation due to the strong oxidation and hydrogen release during the design ...basis accidents (DBA) and beyond design basis accidents (BDBA). Therefore, research and development of accident tolerant fuel (ATF) concepts that aim to improve nuclear fuel safety during normal operation, operational transients and possible accident scenarios have been boosted in the last decade. Deposition of protective coatings on Zircaloy cladding tubes has been considered as a near-term solution of enhanced ATF cladding. Among the candidate coating materials, there is no doubt that the research progress of Cr coating is the fastest around the world because of the advantages of such type of coating: excellent good chemical stability (including oxidation resistance and hydrothermal corrosion resistance), low thermal neutrons absorption cross-section, and excellent adherent. In this paper, the oxidation, diffusion, and mechanical properties of Cr-coated Zr alloys in normal operation conditions and accident conditions of nuclear reactors are reviewed. The factors that cause the failure of the coating are analyzed, and some questions that need to be clarified and further studied are proposed.
•Focus on Cr-coated Zr alloy ATF cladding.•Oxidation and diffusion behavior reviewed.•Mechanical property of the coating discussed.•Failure mechanism analyzed.•Questions to be solved in the future proposed.
The article examines the place of a trademark (service mark) in the economy, the importance of the Madrid Protocol regarding the ownership of a trademark, its registration abroad and advantages. The ...Madrid Agreement and the Madrid Protocol also include such important issues as the need to adopt these documents. The article also describes the procedure and practice of registering a trademark abroad through the Madrid system, and also provides statistics on trademarks that have been registered using this system in recent years on the example of countries and individual entities. Including the article also discusses warning signs aimed at preventing the use of trademarks without the permission of the copyright holder.
•Sn precipitated in Cr2O3 layer after steam oxidation of Cr-coated Zry-4 at 1000 ℃.•The outward diffusion and selective oxidation of Zr in Cr layer were studied.•Larger outward mass flow caused in ...Kirkendall cavities close to Zr/ZrCr2 interface.•Voids formed at oxide/metal interface of coating due to vacancy condensation.•Amorphization of Cr2O3 was observed which due to the decomposition of Cr2O3 grains.
In this study, the steam oxidation behavior of Cr-coated Zry-4 alloy at 1000 °C and the various interesting phenomena observed during the oxidation process were investigated. During oxidation, Sn in the Zry-4 substrate diffused into the coating and precipitated in the Cr2O3 scale. The Kirkendall effect of these Sn-containing precipitates then generated microcavities. Furthermore, the outward diffusion behavior of Zr and the selective oxidation mechanism of the Zr particles were studied. Voids detected at the Cr2O3/Cr interface result mainly from vacancy condensation. The amorphization of Cr2O3 was also observed adjacent to the voids, and the amorphization mechanism was discussed.
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