US 4,867,993 · Granted 1989-09-19

The Collapsible Coffee Pod That Almost Beat Keurig to Market

Imagine a disposable paper cup with built-in coffee grounds and a filter, designed to snap into your regular coffee maker and brew a single serving. The cup collapses for storage, sits upside-down during brewing, and the liquid drains out the bottom — basically a precursor to modern single-serve pod systems, patented in 1989.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a single-use, disposable beverage brewing chamber made from paper or paperboard that collapses and unfolds, with a sealed bottom containing a central hole for liquid to exit, accordion-pleated sidewalls, a removable top seal, and an interior filter bag holding ground coffee or tea. What's protected here is the specific combination of the collapsible container structure, the bottom-drain design, the slide-guide rims that lock it into a brewing machine, and the ability to flatten it for storage.

Why it matters

This patent represents an early attempt to create a standardized, single-serving beverage pod system in an era before Keurig machines dominated the market. The inventor, Robert A. Nordskog, designed a solution that collapsed for compact storage while fitting into conventional coffee machines without requiring specialized equipment. Though the patent was filed in 1988 and granted in 1989, similar disposable brewing chamber concepts didn't achieve mainstream adoption until decades later with capsule systems.

Real-world use

When you drop a disposable coffee pod into a pod-based brewer, you're interacting with technology descended from this 1989 design — a paper container holding grounds, sealed at top and bottom, that gets punctured and drained by the machine.

Original USPTO abstract

The disposable beverage brewing chamber is usable in a conventional coffee or other hot beverage brewing and dispensing machine and includes a preferably inverted frusto-conical or rectangular container fabricated of paper, paperboard or the like and having a closed bottom with central liquid beverage dispensing aperture therein; closed vertically collapsible sidewalls and an open top defining a central cavity therewith. The cavity contains a filter bag holding brewable ground coffee or tea leaves or shreds or coffee substitute, herbal tea or the like and is positioned against the bottom aperture. Peelable strips may seal the top and bottom aperture. The top includes a single peripheral slide guide rim in the case where the container has a round or oval top, and a pair of slide guide rims at opposite sides where the top is square or rectangular. The sidewalls are accordion pleated or telescopable. The container may include a handle which can be collapsible, as can the rim (s) to provide the chamber with a compact storage configuration.

Patent details

Publication number: US 4,867,993
Filing date: 1988-02-08
Grant date: 1989-09-19
Assignee: Nordskog Robert A
Inventor(s): NORDSKOG; ROBERT A.
CPC class: A47J31/02

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