packaging as content

March 18, 2010

Floss ’N’ Cap and Prior Art

Top: a 2004 product photo demonstrating Aquafresh’s new “Floss’N’Cap” feature (with SmithKline Beecham’s patent drawings); bottom row: photos from Cloudberrynine’s Flickr Photostream

GlaxoSmithKline’s floss-dispensing toothpaste tube cap (Floss’N’Cap™) made a big splash in 2004, taking home a number of coveted packaging awards.

SmithKline Beecham is the assignee on a number of patents around this time, but it would be a mistake to imagine that the idea of putting floss into a toothpaste tube cap started there.

The earliest patent that I could find (below) was J.K. Frazer’s “Toilet Article” (Patent filed in 1921 and granted in 1924.) Another very credible effort was A.D. Siewert’s “Ligature Dispensing Cap.” (Patent filed in patented 1925 and granted in 1927.) There are quite a few others.

I happen to see that there have been some “allegations of patent infringement asserted against its Floss-n-Cap™” but GlaxoSmithKline appears to have prevailed in court.

(More great floss-cap patents, after the fold…)

I like the slightly pointy, hexagonal shape of A.D. Siewert’s cap and the way the floss emerges from the point.

Edward J. Brennan’s “Commodity Container” envisions the floss stored either in the cap or in the shoulders of the tube, itself.

Booth & Westgate’s  “Combined Cap and Dental Floss Container” 

Sánchez Cordero patent is for a stock floss cap that can be purchased separately and retrofitted onto the standard size toothpaste tube caps of that time—1980. (This one’s more of package-related consumer product.)

Srinivas S. Chari’s “Apparatus and Method of Dispensing Dental Floss” actually covers a number of different types of package, including mouthwash bottle caps.

David Mortvedt’s “Cap for a Toothpaste Container Having an Incorporated Spool of Dental Floss” is a flip-top cap.

One of the 2004 patents assigned to SmithKline Beecham. (also a flip-top cap)

And back to 1921 just for fun: Francis Edward’s “Floss Carrier” envisions the floss stored, either in the padded shoulders of the toothpaste tube or else in its own tube clipped onto the other end of the toothpaste tube.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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