In recent years, many commercial stores have switched from paper bags for holding customer purchased goods to plastic bags. These plastic bags are formed from a limp plastc film and are not self-supporting. Since it is highly desirable that the customer be able to reuse these bags, such as liners for household trash containers, efforts have been made to provide suitable apparatus for supporting these plastic bags in containers. In Watts (U.S. Pat. No. 4,418,835), there is disclosed a bracket that is secured to a household trash container using bolts passing through openings in the trash container and the bracket and secured to the container using nuts. One problem associated with Watts is that the bracket is fixed in position so that it is not readily adapted for use with plastic bags having a substantially different size. Once the brackets in Watts have been installed, if another plastic bag is obtained and is too small, the bottom of the platic bag will not be in contact with the bottom of the container, and if another plastic bag is obtained and is too large, the top of the plastic bag will not be held open. McClellan (U.S. Pat. No. 4,332,316) discloses a pair of brackets having tabs provided with openings so that the brackets may be attached to a wall or door. The brackets of McClellan have to be structurally strong since they actually support the bag and any item placed in the bag. Orem (U.S. Pat. No. 4,062,170) discloses apparatus for loading plastic bags wherein the handles of the plastic bag are placed over tabs while the bottom of the plastic bag is supported on a bottom wall. Orem is similar to Watts in that it is suited only for use with one size of plastic bag.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds