US 5,310,060 AGranted

Tamper-evident, child-resistant blister packages for medicaments and non-medicaments

AssigneeG. D. Searle & Co.

InventorsJohn M. Bitner, Craig T. Vanderburg, Curtis E. Hart

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Abstract

The present invention concerns a novel tamper-evident, child-resistant blister package for medicaments and nonmedicaments which is user-friendly, but which is difficult to open by young children and impaired adults. Because the blister package has pull tabs which are designed to be pulled away from, rather than towards, article-receiving pockets which may be present in the blister package other than the article-receiving pocket being accessed, a young child or user of the blister package can only access one article-receiving pocket at a time, whether deliberately or inadvertently. The blister package of the invention is an attractive and inexpensive package for the merchandising of pharmaceutical and other products which is constructed in a manner which facilitates mass production.

Claims29

Dependent claims

A tamper-evident, child-resistant blister package for medicaments and nonmedicaments comprising:

(a) a top layer;
(b) a nonrupturable film layer attached to an inner surface of said top layer;
(c) a rupturable film layer attached to that side of said nonrupturable film layer which is not attached to said top layer;
(d) a blister sheet attached to that side of said rupturable film layer which is not attached to said nonrupturable film layer, said blister sheet containing one or more article-receiving pockets which are not separable from said blister package;
(e) perforation means located adjacent to each article-receiving pocket and extending through each of said top layer, said nonrupturable film layer, said rupturable film layer and said blister sheet, said perforation means, when punctured, commencing the opening of said blister package, and generating one or more pull tabs which extend towards and across their adjacent article-receiving pocket, but not across other article-receiving pockets;
(f) one or more depressions present in said blister sheet proximately located to said perforation means, in which said rupturable film layer is not adhered to said blister sheet;
and
(g) at least one stop means located between each perforation means and its adjacent article-receiving pocket, and extending through each of said top layer, said nonrupturable film layer, said rupturable film layer and said blister sheet, for selectively separating said nonrupturable film layer from said rupturable film layer and exposing said rupturable film layer extending over said article-receiving pocket when said nonrupturable film layer is directionally pulled across said article-receiving pocket so that the contents of said article-receiving pocket can be pushed through said rupturable film layer, with said blister package remaining intact at each of its outer edges.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.