Patent Application
20060261070
Not Applicable.
Not Applicable.
There has been increasing interest in food safety on the part of consumers in recent years due to incidents of nefarious individuals tampering with prepackaged food items. Some prepackaged items have a plastic shrink-wrap type seal around a lid of a container that must be broken in order to access the contents of the container. In the case of plastic soft drink bottles and the like having a round screw-type cap, a lower ring may be attached to a skirt of the cap with a score line. Upon twisting of the cap to remove it from the bottle, the screw threads of the bottle impede the upward movement of the lower ring, thereby breaking the ring from the skirt of the cap along the score line and allowing the consumer to fully remove the cap to access the bottle contents. A consumer purchasing such a product at a retail store should notice if the ring were separated from the remainder of the cap, indicating someone has had access to the bottle contents and may have tampered with the product.
Various designs have also been proposed for tamper resistant or tamper evident lids for round food containers, such as ice cream containers and the like. Such tamper resistant/evident lids are designed to provide a visual indication to the purchaser as to whether the lid has been peeled back or otherwise removed from the base food container to expose the contents. One particular configuration is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 5,653,382, issued to Van De Gejin et al, which shows a container lid formed with a skirt having a sufficient downward length so that the same can be curled upward to form a return bend having a radius and an upwardly directed free end. The free end of the curled skirt serves to impede the removal of the container lid once applied by abutting with a lower edge of a rim of the base container. This design has a serious drawback, however, in that the upwardly curled portion of the skirt extending to the free end tends to become uncurled at the curved return bend when the container lid is pulled upward forcefully impacting the free end with the rim. Thus, the lid could easily be removed and reapplied to a food container with the return bend re-curled to give the appearance that the lid hadn't been removed and no tampering had taken place. Other tamper resistant/evident designs are available that incorporate lid skirts with abutting members, but unfortunately, many of these position the abutting members where they may be slid past any catching portion (e.g., the rim) of a base container. As a result, any tamper resistant or tamper evident feature of such a lid may be defeated.
A tamper evident and resistant container lid provides an improved solution for securely covering a base container. The container lid is configured to be difficult to remove from the base container without causing noticeable modification or damage to the container lid. As such, the container lid improves the confidence of consumers in the safety of food items purchased in such containers.
In one aspect of the invention, a tamper evident and resistant container lid has a lid body sized to cover the opening of the base container and a convolute-wrapped skirt extending therefrom. Both an annular score line and an annular fold line extend around the skirt. A first portion of the skirt extends downwardly from the lid body to the fold line and a second portion of the skirt extends upwardly from the fold line in generally opposing relation to and inwardly of the first portion. When the container lid is sufficiently applied to the base container such that the second portion slides downwardly past a top rim of the base container, achieving a proper closure, an attempt to remove the lid will cause a plurality of sections of the inner band to engage the top rim and impede removal of the container lid from the base container.
The invention of another aspect includes a tamper evident and resistant container lid having a lid body sized to cover the opening of the base container, and a skirt including an upper section, an outer band and an inner band. The upper section of the skirt extends downwardly from the lid body to an annular score line below which is formed the outer band. The outer band extends between the annular score line and a lower annular fold line. Extending upwardly from the annular fold line is the inner band positioned in generally opposing relation to and inwardly of the outer band. When the container lid is sufficiently applied to the base container such that the inner band slides downwardly past a top rim of the base container, achieving a proper closure, an attempt to remove the lid will cause a plurality of sections of the inner band to engage the top rim and impede removal of the container lid from the base container.
A process for manufacturing the tamper evident and resistant container lid is presented in another aspect of the invention. A sheet is formed of paper stock having leading and trailing edges, top and bottom edges, and longitudinal score and fold lines extending generally from the leading edge to the trailing edge and spaced from one another. The leading edge of the sheet is wrapped over the trailing edge thereof to form an interior overlap region of the sheet proximal to the trailing edge and an exterior overlap region of the sheet proximal to the leading edge. As a next step, the exterior overlap region is sealed to the interior overlap region to form the sheet into a generally cylindrical skirt. A lid body may then be attached with the skirt to form a container lid, and a portion of the skirt below the longitudinal fold line folded inwardly and upwardly towards the lid body to form the skirt portion into an inner band positioned in generally opposing relation to an outer band defined between the longitudinal score line and the longitudinal fold line. The steps of the process are conducted such that a plurality of sections of the inner band are formed to, upon application of the container lid to the base container whereby the inner band is slid downwardly past the base container top rim, impede removal of the container lid from the base container by engaging with the top rim.
In the accompanying drawings which form a part of the specification and are to be read in conjunction therewith and in which like reference numerals are used to indicated like elements in the various views:
Turning now to the drawings, and initially to
The lid body 12 may have a generally disc-like shape inwardly of the perimeter region 14 towards the center thereof, through other shapes may be utilized for the lid body 12. The skirt 16 includes an interconnect portion 18 for coupling the skirt 16 with the lid body 12, a support portion 20 extending downwardly from the interconnect portion 18 and a tamper evident portion 22 separated from the support portion 20 by a perforated annular score line 24. Forming the tamper evident portion 22 is an outer band 26 and an inner band 28 divided along an annular fold line 30, which may be scored in the same fashion as the score line 24. A pull tab 32 extends from the outer band 26 at a leading edge 34 of the skirt 16. When a consumer desires to access the contents held in the base container 100, the tab 32 is pulled away from the remainder of the skirt 16, as seen in
The design of the inner band 28 of the skirt 16 enables a tamper resistant feature of the lid 10 to be realized. More specifically, a plurality of sections of the inner band 28 are formed into interference members 38, as best seen in
The interconnection between the lid body 12 and the skirt 16 is achieved by forming the perimeter region 14 with a vertically-extending leg member 42 extending from the lower edge 36 thereof, and shaping the interconnection portion 18 to mate with the leg member 42. More specifically, the leg member 42 has a generally upside down “J” profile with a return bend 44 cradled by an upper lip 46 of the interconnect portion 18. An annular groove 48 is also formed into the interconnect portion 18 below the upper lip 46, and a curved arm 50 extends below the annular groove back towards the lower edge 36 to terminate in a free edge 52. This configuration for the interconnect portion 18 and the leg member 42 provides good interlocking between the lid body 12 and the skirt 16.
One method of forming the container lid 10 will now be described. The skirt 16 may be die cut from paper stock to achieve the shape necessary for the final design.
Next, the template 54 is convolute wrapped, or bent in a curve fashioned to form a complete loop with the leading edge 34 overlapping the trailing edge 56. The amount of overlap between the leading and trialing edges 34, 56 is chosen to achieve the initial outline of the skirt 16 with the correct dimensions to fit over the base container 100 and such that adequate surface area is presented for applying adhesive to secure or seal the region of the skirt 16 near the leading edge 34 to the region of the skirt 16 near the trailing edge 56. Various adhesives, such as industry recognized food grade adhesives, may be used in forming the skirt as described.
The lid body 12 may also be die cut as previously described to have a shape that will fit within the formed skirt 16. The leg member 42 of the lid body 12 may be shaped as shown in
At this point, the portion of the skirt 16 below the fold line 30 may be folded inwardly and upwardly along the fold line 30 towards the lid body 12 to form the inner band 28. The inner band 28 is thereby positioned in opposing relation to the outer band 30 formed between the score line 24 and the fold line 30.
In the steps of convolute wrapping and sealing the leading edge 34 over the trailing edge 56, adhesive is preferably not applied to the pull tab 32 such that the tab 32 extends freely and essentially tangentially from the leading edge 34 of the skirt 16. This facilitates easy grasping of the pull tab 32 by a user to tear off the tamper evident portion 22 along the score line 24. Additionally, the aforementioned configuration encourages outward pulling of the tab 32 to increase the probability of a clean break along the score line 24 and avoid erratic tearing along the skirt 16 upwards or downwards from the score line 24.
The interference members 38 may be formed by pulling on the inner band 28 at spaced intervals, which may have a consistent value around the inner band 28 if desired (e.g., every 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, etc.). Preferably, the pulling forms a pair of creases 62 running diagonally along the inner band 28 from the upper free edge 40 thereof to the fold line 30 to establish the shape of the interference members 38 with an impact edge 64, as seen in
The container lid 10 may thus be manufactured with a tamper evident feature already in place, merely requiring that the lid 10 be applied or mounted onto the base container 100 for full activation. One suitable application method for the container lid 10 is by wipe on in the same fashion as standard food container lids are applied (e.g., cylindrical ice cream container lids). The interference members 38 are oriented such that the inner band 28 can easily slide past the container top rim 102 as the container lid 10 is pushed onto the base container 100 from above. Once the inner band upper free edge 40 passes by the container top rim 102 during container lid 10 application, the interference members 38 snap inward towards the base container sidewall 104 to form the interference with the top rim 102. This provides the advantage of requiring no other post activation by the user once the desired product is placed in the base container 100 and the container lid 10 is “wiped on”.
From the forgoing, it can be seen that the container lid 10 of the present invention provides an effective device for alerting consumers of attempts to remove the covering from a base container, while also serving to thwart such attempts. The tamper evident portion 22 is also easy to remove by the purchasing consumer so that once the tamper evident nature of the lid 10 have served their purpose, the consumer is not significantly impeded in accessing the product in the base container 100. Furthermore, since certain changes may be made in the above invention without departing from the scope hereof, it is intended that all matter contained in the above description or shown in the accompanying drawing be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense.
