1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compact disc (CD) tray and CD trays which are bound into a bundle to allow compact discs to be stored in an ordered fashion.
2. Description of the Related Art
A compact disc is a device employing a laser beam technology for retrieving data signals recorded along micro tracks on a plastic diskette, and is commonly called a CD. Since Phillips and Sony first introduced prototypes in the late 1970s, CDs have improved rapidly as a reliable storage system for all types of data, as well as video images, audio signals, etc.
In spite of its indisputable merits, however, sheltering of the CD in a cassette was a difficult problem to be resolved. Therefore, a flip-open type case, which was adopted at the beginning, still dominates its market. In this regard, the conventional flip-open type cases by their nature hardly allow their storage as a bundle binding, and so are required to be used separately. The conventional flip-open type cases are tremendously inconvenient to use, such as for indexing, archiving, publishing, and so on. Thus, the conventional flip-open cases are often replaced with other bundle housing types, such as CD pouches, CD cabinets, CD frames, etc. Therefore, if there were some simple ways capable of allowing the CD cases to be book-bound, it would be most ideal for suffering computer users.
While there have been various excellent ideas on the market up to now, they are not yet successful in terms of practical usage, manufacturing, pricing or archiving, in particular, in digital publishing or large or small scale categorized storage of CDs.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made in an effort to solve the problems occurring in the related art, and an object of the present invention is to eliminate one side covering of a CD case by means of book-binding.
Unlike the conventional CD cases, the present invention focuses on the protection of a CD""s data-written land by overlaying one tray over another into the shape of a booklet, which will overcome the CD shortcomings as stated above.
Further, the present invention includes other various detailed features and thereby solves the problems of the conventional flip-open type CD cases.
Moreover, the present invention is also ideally suited to digital publishing and archiving by its peculiar bookbindability. As well, by employing this idea, a blank CD with a reasonable extra cost for a casing can expand its market range to a great extent.
In one embodiment, a CD tray according to the invention consists of two major characteristics. One is a tray body with a thinnest possible thickness, which has a circular basin with a minimal depth to accommodate a compact disc, and the other is a fingertip opening, that is, a release opening which is defined adjoining a center hole of a CD holder plate. Holder fins, that is, clip pegs are formed on an inner edge of the CD holder plate, which defines the center hole.
At least one side end surface of the CD tray is made flat so that the CD tray can be book-bound using an adhesive tape or any other suitable means, whereby CD trays bound can be flipped one by one like ordinary book pages. As a consequence, any selected CD on a tray can be released instantly by pushing a non-data land portion of the CD with one fingertip through the release opening.
Since the fingertip opening of the CD holder plate according to the present invention is shaped in a unique manner, even a woman""s fingertip with a long nail can release the CD without any difficulty.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds