Patent Document ID: 20020188588
Application ID: 09851698
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for identifying chemical products, the manufacturing processes of which consume a certain raw material, in a database of companies comprising fields of chemical products manufactured by a company and raw materials purchased by a company, comprising the steps of: receiving a name of a raw material; generating a list of synonyms of said raw material from a table of synonyms; creating a query consisting of said raw material and said synonyms of said raw material; comparing said query to said database to generate a list of records that contain said raw material or at least one said synonym of said raw material, or both; generating a list of pairs, wherein a pair is defined as said raw material and one said chemical product contained in one said record of said list of records; creating a ratio for each said pair, wherein said ratio's numerator is the number of times said pair occurs in said database and said ratio's denominator is the number of records in the database that contain said raw material or at least one said synonym of said raw material, or both; comparing said ratios to a constant, wherein said constant indicates the threshold for the magnitude of the ratio required for reporting that said raw material is consumed in the manufacture of a chemical product; and generating a list of hits, wherein a hit occurs whenever a ratio for a pair exceeds said constant.