Holder for inverted bottles

Abstract

This invention is an inexpensive and simple to manufacture holder for inverted bottles or containers of different sizes, shapes and material. The inverted bottle holder is intended to support closed or capped bottles that are inverted in the holder and will provided a stable position for viscous fluid in the bottle to drain into the neck under the force of gravity. The collection of fluid in the neck of the bottle will allow for easier and more rapid expulsion of the product from the bottle. The bottles themselves can be made from any type of material and may or may not have handles.

Description

This application claims priority of provisional No. 60/594,842, filed May 11, 2005

BACKGROUND

This invention relates to container draining devices. More specifically, this invention relates to an apparatus for holding in an inverted position different sizes and shapes of bottles containing fluids, particularly viscous fluids such as ketchup, salad dressing, honey, mustard, barbecue sauce, motor oils, glues, shampoos, soaps, dishwashing liquids and many more.

Ever since the introduction of viscous products sold in containers or bottles, consumers have been frustrated trying to remove the last drop of product from the container. The desirability of draining the residue from near-empty bottles of ketchup, honey and other viscous liquids has long been recognized. Reasons for wanting to extract as much as possible of the product include reducing wastage, the immediate absence of a new bottle or container of product, or the desire to facilitate rinsing of the container in preparation for recycling. Water would also be saved in the cleaning of recyclable bottles or containers, in line with the current interest in the environment.

In response to this, several bottle holders have been developed to facilitate extraction of the last remaining contents of containers from closed and inverted bottles so the contents will be readily available when the bottle is opened again for use, and numerous designs for inverted bottle holders have been patented. However, none of the existing designs are completely suitable for the purpose for which they were intended.

For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,769,280 discloses a substantially flat design comprising a complicated system of jaws, which tighten onto bottle caps. This is both inconvenient to use and expensive to manufacture.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,664,753 also discloses a device designed to engage the cap of a bottle to hold the bottle or container in an inverted position. This device is extremely limited in the range of bottles it can hold, as the bottles all must have substantially the same size and shape of cap.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,924,659 discloses an apparatus with a pair of grasping arms selectively adjustable to grasp and hold containers of various sizes and shapes in an inverted position. Again, this is a complicated design and expensive to manufacture. It is impractical to use because it has to be adjusted for differently sized bottles.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,105,860 is interesting in that it proposes a holder with several clear advantages, which are:

it accommodates different bottle shapes and sizes

it accommodates bottles with handles

accurate positioning of the bottles is not necessary

bottles can be removed vertically

freestanding

it has food-safe surfaces

it is washable and dishwasher safe

fits in a fridge

However, the drawbacks with this design are numerous. It is of a large overall size, which means that storage of more than one of them and shipping is not efficient. Its design comprises large volumes of solid material, so it is costly in its requirement of raw materials and each one will take a relatively long time to mould. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine how such a shape could be moulded to include the guide rails for the drip collecting drawers included in the design.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,702,009 discloses an inverted bottle holder that overcomes some of the problems of the aforementioned prior art. This patent discloses a cube-shaped hollow body having a sidewall on each of five sides defining a cavity which is open at a sixth side. Several of the sidewalls have different sized apertures capable of holding the neck of particular sized bottles.

It has only some of the advantages listed for the preceding patent, but in addition, it clearly has the following useful features:

one piece construction

no joints to trap food and germs

it works with the lid remaining on the bottle

However, the non-nestability of the cube-shaped design acts as an impediment to efficient storage and shipping. Furthermore, it is a complicated shape, which is not suited to economical one-step manufacture.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,109,581 depicts a multi-piece inverted bottle holder, which for the required stability, has a flat base attached to the main body, or requires the device to be attached to a wall bracket. Some of the advantages of this holder which are not listed above are:

the base is larger than the upper part for stability

there are side holes for viewing remaining bottle contents

the bottle does not have to be strictly vertical

Another detriment to one of the designs in the patent is that bottles can project through the envelope of the holder onto the flat base, which may lead to the unsuccessful capture of drips from a lid, which is not properly closed. In addition, the cap of the bottle may snag in the hole in the wall when lifting it out vertically.

U.S. Pat. No. 6,481,685 describes a one-piece cylindrical holder which is not intended to be bulky. One of its stated advantages is that it is:

lightweight

However, it provides resistive engagement with a bottle, which may cause the bottle to stick to the holder. It suffers from the fact that it is not nestable, so that storage of more than one unit within cabinets or refrigerators, or on shop shelves, or during shipping, is not efficient. A further drawback in this design is that the projecting flexible legs are prone to damage.

None of the prior art devices have all the advantageous features, listed (a-o). A truly useful device must clearly incorporate every one of these features. While there are existing holders which hold bottles with handles, and which can fit inside a refrigerator, these holders are either bulky or inconveniently depend on gripping the cap tightly in order to maintain the bottle vertical. There is therefore a need to provide a compact holder into which bottles can be inverted and supported loosely and which can accommodate handled bottles without them toppling over. If one considers the financial benefit of the holder, which is clear but small and recouped over a period of time, it is a further requirement of a successful holder that it be as inexpensive as possible to manufacture. This requires not only a one-piece design, but also a simple, one-step manufacturing process. Existing holders may be stackable on top of each other, which is a waste of storage space. Therefore, to make for more efficient storage, of more than one holder in the home, for example, and to minimize shipping and storage costs, the holder must also be of such a construction that it is nestable with other like holders. The invented bottle holder can be used and reused in many places. Compared to prior art, it will save time in extraction of the contents, money in product, possible personal injury, recycling material and human frustration by all ages.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

The current invention has a combination of all of the necessary features of a successful device, listed as (a-o) in the above section, together with additional novel features. These features are nestability, one-step manufacture such as injection moulding, and a compact solution of holding bottles with handles, all of which have not been considered in the prior art. Also comprised in the invention is a new way of providing extra stability to the holder.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a simplified three-dimensional view of the holder.

FIG. 2 is a front view showing the cutout

FIG. 3 is a sectional view

FIG. 4 shows the nestability of the holder

FIG. 5 shows a thickened base

FIG. 6 is an alternative holder

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Below is described a preferred embodiment of the invention which is not intended to be a limiting example.

A key feature of the invention is to allow many different bottles to be easily dropped, lid first into the holder and corralled into a vertical or nearly vertical position. This will cause any viscous product to gravitate into the neck of the bottle for easy extraction. To do this, the holder must generally have an interior which is somewhat cup shaped, narrowing downwards almost vertically, conforming very roughly to the shape of an inverted bottle. The inside shape, for example, may be an inverted truncated cone or its sides may be trapezoidal. FIG. 1 shows a simplified three-dimensional rendering of the holder.

FIG. 2 shows a front view, and features which are described below. To provide stability, the exterior part of the walls 21 of the holder are flared, which provides that the three dimensional envelope of the holder has a greater cross-sectional area in the horizontal plane at its base than at the top.

It is important for the walls 21 of the holder not to be solid. This is depicted by the sectional view from direction 22, drawn in FIG. 3, because if they were, the holders would simply stack inefficiently on top of each other. By ensuring that there is no vertical surface, which is done by having sloping interior walls 31 and flared exterior walls, and making the walls hollow, the holders can be nestled into each other, as can be seen in FIG. 4.

To allow for bottles with handles to fit into the holder accommodate bottles with handles, a notch 11 is cut-away from one of the walls starting at the top edge and descending part of the way down. The handle on a bottle can then extend partially into the notch, or partially or completely through it. In this way, the body of the holder does not need to physically extend around the outside of the handle, which allows the holder to be overall as compact and as light as possible.

The inverted bottle holder is of such dimensions as to conveniently fit in a refrigerator door. It can simply be placed inside the door or provided with a fixing mechanism so that it can be temporarily fixed to the inside of the door or the main refrigerator compartment. The inverted bottle holder can be removed from the refrigerator and placed on a level surface, such as a dining table, retaining the original design purpose. Its shape, size and weight are suitable for children as well as adults to handle. Alternatively, clips could be provided in order to allow the holder to be clipped removably to the edge of a table, countertop or wall.

The surface 32 at the bottom of the interior will contain any small amount of fluid, which may accidentally leak out from loosely fitting or improperly secured caps, stoppers and lids.

The bottle holder is constructed from a single piece of material in a one-step construction process such as injection molding. The open top edges will be rounded so not to damage the bottles or containers or their labels when placed in the holder. Other external edges are rounded to avoid scratching the user when gripping the holder, and for ease of manufacture. It is made of washable, food-safe and dishwasher safe plastic.

As an option, to further increase the stability of the invention, it is possible to thicken the base of the holder 51, thereby providing additional weightiness, as shown in FIG. 5. The additional importance of providing the weightiness at or near the base is that the centre of gravity of the holder is lowered, thus providing additional stability for heavier bottles or bottles with significantly more contents remaining. The advantages of nestability, one-piece design and a one-step manufacturing process are preserved if the holder is modified in this way.

Another option would be to include drain holes in the holder, such that when the holder is placed in a dishwasher, the holes allow the water to escape from the holder permitting it to dry. For example, the drain holes could be placed near the top of the holder which would then be positioned in an upside-down position for washing. It is also possible to place the holes in other positions.

An alternative development of the invention would be to have a holder comprising two or more receptacle areas, such that two or more containers can be held at the same time. The containers could be the same or different. The holder could be made with a single moulding or it could be two or more single holders clipped together.

As an illustration of how different an alternate embodiment of this invention may be, without the loss of any of the essential features of the invention, and without limiting the scope of the invention, refer to FIG. 6. In this example, the cap or lid of the bottle is confined in a small area 61 at one end of the base. A main support 62 wall projects upwards at an acute angle from the opposite end of the base and splits into two profiled arms between which different types of bottle or container can lean. Between the two arms is a cut away notch 63 for accommodating the handle of a bottle if it has one. By ensuring that the planes of the sloping cap support 64 and the sloping main wall 62 diverge from each other rather than being parallel, the nestability of the holder is preserved. By making the small sidewalls 65 divergent it is possible to nest the holders more densely.

The invention may be used in areas other than related to food, such as for holding glue bottles or tubes, or oils for example. In this case, it may be desirable to allow the holder to clip to a tool storage unit or be made from metal for greater strength.

Claims

1. A holder for non-resistively supporting a container with a closure device and containing a viscous fluid at an angle of greater than zero degrees to the horizontal, such that the base of the container is more elevated than the closure device of the container, wherein

i) the three dimensional envelope of the holder has a greater cross-sectional area in the horizontal plane at the base of the holder than at the top of the holder,

ii) the holder has at least one cut away section in at least one of its walls capable of allowing a handle on a supported container to at least partially project there through, and

iii) when the holder is not supporting a container it is capable of nestling with at least one other said holder.

2. A holder as claimed in claim 1, which is made from the same material throughout.

3. A holder as described in claim 1 made in a one-step manufacturing process.

4. A holder as described in claim 1 wherein the material of at least a portion of its base part is thicker than the other parts of the holder.

5. A holder as in claim 1 which can fit in a refrigerator door shelf.

6. A holder as in claim 1 which can be removably attached to the inside of a refrigerator door.

7. A holder as in claim 1 which can be removably attached to the inside of the main compartment of a refrigerator.

8. A holder as in claim 1 which can hold at least two containers.

9. A holder as in claim 1 which is freestanding on a level surface.

10. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which will contain minor spills.

11. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which is washable.

12. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which is made from a food-safe material.

13. A holder as claimed In claim 1 which is dishwasher safe.

14. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which can be removably attached to a wall.

15. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which can be attached to a tool storage unit.

16. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which is made from plastic.

17. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which is made from metal.

18. A holder as claimed in claim 1 with at least one drain hole positioned to allow dishwasher water to drain out of the holder when placed in a dishwasher.

19. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which can be removably attached to at least one other holder as described by claim 1.

20. A holder as claimed in claim 1 which can be removably attached to the edge of a table or countertop.