Friday, February 27, 2015

Patents on Cup-Sleeves

Discussed below are eight patents on cup-sleeves:  

A Thermal Coffee Cup
US 2661889; Priority date Jul 20, 1948
A thermal coffee cup is also an invention for insulating a user’s hand from a hot beverage cup. The motivation and background is to provide a combined holder and coffee cup which is of simple construction, inexpensive to manufacture, easy to assemble, and easy for users to use. The technology is to design an insulating jacket, which is provided with a corrugated lining to receive a cup-like container. This patent claims an insulated container jacket which comprises an outer frusto conical-shaped sleeves and an inner corrugated lining.

Sleeve construction for improved paperboard cup insulation
US 6152363; May 3, 1999
This invention is a sleeve with hot-melt glue dots that improves the insulating characterizes of a paperboard cup to the same level of common polystyrene cups. The motivation is to design a lightweight sleeve cut from a single blank, adds an air-gap layer, and preserves a smooth outside-sleeve surface for printing. The technology is to add plurality of air-gap means rigidly attached to the first side of the sleeve. There are total of five claims that include the sleeve construction components and structure.

Insulating Sleeve
US 63433735 B1; Priority date May 4, 2000
Insulating Sleeve is an improved sleeve for insulating a user’s hand from a hot beverage cup. The background and motivation for this invention is to find an inexpensive, biodegradable and adequate insulation for the user’s hand from the temperature of a liquid contained in a cup to replace the more commonly used Styrofoam, which is bad for the environment and the corrugated paperboard, which doesn’t provide sufficient insulation. The technology and idea is to design two wings or ridges that are placed away from the cup sidewall by a spacer element to provide the person with gripping not in contact with the cup. There are total of fifteen claims for the two sleeve portions angled away from the sidewall, location of the sleeve portions, structure, where it is used, and how it can be made.

Thermal Sleeve, Method for Manufacturing a Thermal sleeve, and Combination Cup and Thermal Sleeve
US 8251277 B1, Priority date Apr 15, 2005
Thermal Sleeve, as the name suggests, is an invention to provide a thermal insulation. The technology is to use a creped paper in the form of a laminate to design a product with a first end, a second end, a first cup opening, and a second cup opening, and an adhesive holding the first end and the second end together to form a wrap around a cup. There are thirteen associated claims that include composition and structure of the said sleeve, and different combinations of the said sleeve with variety of cups in different materials.  

Beverage cup sleeving system and method
US20080078824 A1; Priority date (?) Aug 23, 2006
The invention is beverage sleeve comprising a layer of elastomer. This design is motivated by the desire to provide an insulating cup sleeve that is effective when wetted, effective against extremely high and low temperatures, is reusable and easily manufactured. The technology is to use the elastomeric and fabric composite sleeve as insulating material. There are total of twenty patents comprising the insulating system, cup protector components, and insulating ring configuration.

Temperature-indicating sleeve and related container
US 8118189 B1; Priority date Dec 15, 2006
Temperature-indicating sleeve and container is an invention with visible temperature indicator in or on the sidewall of the container to indicate the temperature of the contents inside the container. The motivation and background is the observation that when hot items such as coffee and tea in insulated containers are purchased for immediate consumption, consumers generally can’t tell if the item is too hot to consume. Thus, carelessness can easily lead to scald or burn the mouth, lips, or other parts of the body if spilled. The technology is a sleeve with a visually observable temperature indicator on or in the sleeve wall. The temperature indicator is calibrated according to the known insulating property of the container. There are eighteen associated claims for this invention. Claims one through seventeen include the basic components and composition arrangement of the sleeve and container. Claim eighteen is a method of manufacturing such product.

Protective Sleeve
US 20100019023; Priority date (?) July 25, 2008
This is another invention of protective sleeve that aims to provide insulation from user’s hand and the temperature of the container. The uniqueness of the sleeve is the arc-shape. According to the inventor, the arch shape reduce sheet material as compare to sleeves without an arc shape, and more efficient to manufacture than sleeves which adapt to the shape of a conical cup by the expansion of slits, notches and honeycomb structure. There are total of twenty claims, which include basic structure of the sleeve, method for forming such sleeve, and the corresponding sheet material.

Hot and Cold Cup Sleeve
US 20140151385; Priority date(?) Feb 6, 2014
This is one of the newer inventions on sleeve that aims to insulate hand from the container’s temperature. This invention is motivated by the observation that hot cup sleeves do not work well for the cold drinks because cold drink gathers moisture and cold cup sleeves are bulky. With the goal of designing an inexpensive, thin, single-use sleeve for hot/cold beverage, the designer invented a light weighted product with three layers. The inner layer is water absorbent to prevent condensation from dripping onto the table and the outer layer is made of non-woven synthetic fabric to keep hands dry. These two layers are connected with polyethylene film. There are total of twelve associated claims that include the components of the sleeves, the materials, and functionalities of the components.



22 comments:

  1. Hi Cai!

    Appreciated your different approach to discussing the patents from me where you talked about everything in a paragraph format! Written very well and everything made logical sense.

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  2. Awesome job, Yi, well done! Just as Aradhana said, this is very well written and presented in a logical order.

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    1. Hi Guy! Great comment except it would have been great if you mentioned specifics from blog.

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    2. This will be pretty meta of me, but I liked that you included my comment in your comment. I liked when other people did this on my blog, because it was like further confirmation on what someone had already said about my blog post.

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  3. Hi Yi,
    Thanks for your blog post. you were very thorough and discussed them logically. It is clear you read through each patent and have a grasp.

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  4. Hi Cai!

    Great work. Your summaries are concise and very thorough! Keep it up.

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    1. Great comment, but maybe include specific things she can work on in the future!

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  5. Hi Cai!

    Great work. Your summaries are concise and very thorough! Keep it up.

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  6. I really enjoyed your summaries! They were very concise. You took some very interesting approaches. Thanks for the post. :)

    Masaki

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  7. Hi Yi,

    What I thought you did best in this blog specifically was to list out the primary components of each patent, what you discerned as most important about each patent, and laid it out in a manner that was easy for us to understand. These patents are quite difficult to interpret so the way you explained them was relatively easy on the average reader. One suggestion is maybe to describe the diagrams listed in each patent a bit more as these are critical to understanding the entire composition of the patent. Fantastic job nonetheless!

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    1. I like how you pinpointed your favorite part about the blog. I do like your suggestion as well. Very nice comment.

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    2. I really like how you point out what you liked about this post, then giving her some suggestion to further improver her blog post!

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  8. Hi Yi,
    I thought you did a great job accurately summarizing all of the patents. Nice job organizing!

    Sasha

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  9. Hey Yi,

    I really enjoyed reading your post and I appreciate your thorough and detailed explanations which helped me better understand about patents.
    Great work!

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  10. Hi Yi,

    You did a great job summarizing the patents. I really liked the key differences you noted for each patent and the impact it would have on overall utility. I think it could have more detail on back ground however. Keep up the good work!

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    1. I like that you offered a suggestion to improve. It provides so much more than
      a simple comment.

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  11. Hi Yi! Great explanations! I like how you clearly wrote which patent, the priority date, and then gave a good summary of the paten. It was really easy to understand! Thanks for the good insight :)

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    1. Nice to go over specific parts of the post when you commented. Lets the reader know that you read her post through, which is important for the reader. Nice!

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  12. Great job! I like the explanations. It would be cool to see how similar other patents which exist in this field might be to the patents you explored.

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  13. Good job explaining each topic and very well structured as well.

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  14. I thought it was very well organized and understood. You articulated the concepts eloquently and succinctly, good job! Perhaps a tad more of elaboration but nonetheless, excellent!

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  15. Great job organizing and breaking down each patent. Maybe a little more analysis could have been helpful, but great job!

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