US 4,125,220 AGranted

Plastic shopping bag having a reinforced handle portion

OwnerHeikki S. Suomineninventor

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Abstract

A plastic shopping bag is provided with an integral handle portion of wave configuration having a strip of reinforcement material therein of heavier gauge plastic than the remainder of the bag. The heavier gauge strip extends across the handle portion in spaced relation to the side edges of the bag. A plurality of such bags are fabricated by providing a flattened plastic film tube which has coextensive overlapping strips of heavier gauge material on the opposite faces thereof, cutting through the tube faces along a cutting line of cyclically recurring wave configuration that extends in the direction of elongation of the heavier gauge strips, the wavelength of said wave configuration being substantially equal to the desired width of the mouth of one of said shopping bags and the amplitude of said wave configuration being greater than the widths of said heavier gauge strips whereby the crests of the wave configuration are located at positions outside the boundary edges of the heavier gauge strips, and thereafter cutting the two faces along transverse seam lines which extend from the wave configuration crests to the outer edges of the flat tube of plastic film material.

Claims7

Dependent claims

A plastic shopping bag comprising a pair of opposing bag faces fabricated of plastic film material joined to one another to form a closed bottom edge for said bag, a pair of closed side edges spaced from one another and extending transversely to said bottom edge, and an open mouth located between said side edges in spaced relation to said bottom edge, each of said faces defining a handle portion for said bag adjacent said open mouth, the handle portion on each of said faces comprising an integral portion of said face shaped in a wave configuration symmetrical about a center line disposed substantially equidistant between said side edges of said bag with the lowest points of said wave configuration being located adjacent the side edges of said bag and the highest point of said wave configuration being located substantially on said center line, the handle portion on each of said faces including a strip of plastic material which is of heavier gauge than the faces of said bag, said heavier gauge strip extending across said handle portion in a direction generally parallel to said bottom edge of said bag, said heavier gauge strip including a lower boundary edge which intersects said wave configuration at locations between said lowest and highest points of said wave configuration that are spaced inwardly of the side edges of said bag.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.