US 4,746,028 · Granted 1988-05-24

The Foam Sleeve That Changed How We Hold Hot Coffee

This patent covers a foam or insulating sleeve that wraps around a paper coffee cup to keep your hand from burning. It has a flexible C-shaped handle built right into it so you can hold the cup without touching the hot sides. It's simple, but it's the design that lets the sleeve grip any size cup smoothly.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a thermally insulating sleeve designed to slide onto the outside of a cylindrical beverage container. What's protected here is the specific combination of a flexible, resilient sleeve that grips the container's sides, plus an integrated C-shaped handle with a mounting flange that has a curved inner surface to contact the cup's cylindrical shape. Anyone making an unauthorized insulating sleeve with this exact structural arrangement—flexible sidewall grip plus the specially curved handle mounting system—would infringe on this patent.

Why it matters

This patent locks down the core design of the disposable coffee cup sleeve, one of the most ubiquitous and simple solutions in the food-service industry. By securing the specific mechanical combination of the flexible grip and integrated handle geometry, the patent gave its holder control over this category of product. For decades, every coffee shop, fast-food restaurant, and café has relied on this sleeve design or variants of it, making this one of those rare patents that became nearly invisible because the solution was so elegant and widely adopted.

Real-world use

Every time you wrap your fingers around a paper coffee cup at a coffee shop without burning yourself, you're touching the exact design this patent protects—that soft, flexible sleeve with the handle cutout.

Original USPTO abstract

The present invention is directed to a thermally insulating sleeve, that is mounted on a disposable beverage container, having an outwardly projecting handle. The sleeve is both flexible and resilient so that it grips the sidewalls of the container. The handle is C-shaped and provided with a mounting flange located inside of the sleeve. The mounting flange is provided with an arcuate inner surface for engaging the cylindrical sidewalls of a beverage container.

Patent details

Publication number: US 4,746,028
Filing date: 1986-10-14
Grant date: 1988-05-24
Assignee: Bagg Robert D
Inventor(s): BAGG; ROBERT D.
CPC class: B65D81/3876

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