US 5,242,702 · Granted 1993-09-07

The Nespresso Capsule Patent That Revolutionized Home Coffee

This patent protects the capsule system that lets you make espresso-style coffee at home by stabbing a sealed pod with pressurized water. The clever part: the capsule's bottom membrane is designed to tear open in a specific way when water and air are forced in, releasing the brewed coffee without splitting the whole thing apart.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a sealed coffee cartridge system where a frustoconical capsule holds ground coffee between a filter and a deformable bottom face. What's protected here is the specific combination: the filter's strength to hold under pressure, the bottom face's ability to deform and rupture at pressures between 1 and 10 bar without tearing prematurely, and the method of injecting a water-and-air mixture to force that bottom face outward until it tears in a controlled way to release brewed coffee.

Why it matters

This patent became foundational to Nespresso's single-serve capsule coffee system, which transformed the home coffee market starting in the 1990s. The elegant engineering—making sure the membrane tears predictably and the filter holds strong—solved the practical problem of extracting coffee from a sealed pod without mess or user risk. It created a closed-loop product category that generated billions in revenue for Nestec and spawned countless imitators and patent disputes.

Real-world use

Every time someone loads a Nespresso capsule into their machine and hears the hiss as pressurized water punches through, they're witnessing this patent in action—the capsule's bottom face deforming and rupturing on cue.

Original USPTO abstract

Roast and ground coffee, which is contained in a sealed frustoconically shaped cartridge between a first cartridge face and a filter which separates the coffee from a second cartridge face, is extracted by first placing the cartridge in a holder to hold a rim of the cartridge so that the second face is adjacent a finger. The filter has a strength sufficient to withstand, without tearing, the pressure in the cartridge upon extraction, and the second face has a strength sufficient to deform and withstand, without tearing, a pressure in the cartridge upon extraction of greater than 1 bar but less than 10 bar. After placement of the cartridge, the first face is pierced with an injector, and a mixture of water and air is injected from the injector under a pressure of from 1 bar to 10 bar to deform the second face in a direction away from the filter and towards the finger to apply the second face against the finger to tear the second face to enable extraction liquid to flow from the cartridge.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,242,702
Filing date: 1991-07-02
Grant date: 1993-09-07
Assignee: Nestec S.A.
Inventor(s): FOND; OLIVIER
CPC class: A47J31/0668

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