Spray bottles used to dispense common liquids in a spray are often used at an angle and therefore are notoriously difficult to empty via the built-in flexible suction tube since the suction tube typically is aligned with a bottom center of the bottle, and not the bottom rim, where the last vestiges of liquid often reside. Traditional spray bottles thus lead to waste as they tend not to make it possible to use the spray mechanism to empty the bottle. Rather the last ounces of liquid are either used by opening the cap and dumping the liquid out, or the last ounces are merely thrown away with the bottle.
Numerous solutions have been proposed that involve causing a deflection of the flexible suction tube via one or more elements built into the bottle. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 7,055,722 (“Ouellete”), discloses a spray bottle having one or more walls or partitions for directing a flexible suction tube into a chamber of the bottle where fluid preferably is contained even as the bottle is emptied and tipped at various angles. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2505/0087568 (“Silvaggio”), discloses a spray bottle having a first baffle positioned in the bottle to create a well or accumulation of fluid in a bottom portion of the bottle when it is moved from a vertical to a horizontal position, especially when the total level of fluid in the reservoir is low. U.S. Pat. No. 5,464,129 (“Ho”) teaches a structure within a spray bottle for completely removing all the liquid from within the container through the dip tube and out of the pump head. Ho uses a dip tube coupled to a first side wall of the bottle via a dip tube maintaining component. However, these inventions can only be used by bottle manufacturers, and users of spray bottles that do not have such built-in deflection angles, are without relief from the problem of emptying a spray bottle.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds