This invention relates to a child resistant safety closure for necked containers and, more particularly, to improved child resistant dispensing closures. There are a wide variety of child resistant closures so named because of the difficulty of children removing the closure or opening the dispensing opening in the closure. Such closures have incorporated hinged locking flaps that cooperate with a body portion to effect the closing of one or more dispensing openings in the body portion. Typical of such prior art disclosures are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,845,872 to Townes, 3,927,805 to Stull, 4,022,352 to Pehr, and more recently, 4,371,095 to Montgomery et al. These patents have only a single child resistant feature. Another U.S. Pat. No. 4,209,100, discloses a similar integral flap for closing a dispensing opening in the body portion and a non-removal feature for preventing removal of the body from a container neck that has locking means. The safety feature of these patents rely on the requirement that manipulation of the body relative to the flap is necessary to raise or expose the flap. One inherent problem is that regardless of the difficulty or the unlikelihood that the child can open the dispensing flap by chance, the body could be removed without difficulty, with exception of the last mentioned patent. However, in the case of this last mentioned patent, the body cannot be removed by a discerning adult since it is designed to not be unthreaded once it is fully applied. Further, the possibility of inadvertent opening by a child while banging the container against a hard surface in such a manner as to release the flap detracts from its safety purpose.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds