Supports: cabinet structure – For storing audio or visual recording medium – Disk or parallelepiped shape
Reexamination Certificate
1995-11-28
2001-02-27
Cuomo, Peter M. (Department: 3636)
Supports: cabinet structure
For storing audio or visual recording medium
Disk or parallelepiped shape
C049S489100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06193336
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND—FIELD OF INVENTION
This invention relates generally to holders made for storing and organizing media cases and other shelved items, and more particularly to a holder having a retaining device for keeping such items, and preferably media cases such as compact disc cases, in place.
BACKGROUND—DESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART
There are several related and continuing problems found with holders which utilize retaining devices to organize compact disc (hereafter abbreviated to CD) cases and other families of such substantially rectangular media containers, cases, and cartridges. Such holders with retaining devices must overcome problems presented by a variety of media cases, including those which are specific to the storage and retention of CD cases. The following review and analysis of these continuing problems, and their partial solutions found in relevant prior art, will begin with a discussion of CD cases as they are the most problematic.
Standard CD cases are rectangular, hard plastic containers which, when standing upright in book-like fashion, are of uniform height and depth, but vary in width depending on the number of discs they are made to contain. A CD case containing a single disc is quite narrow, being only 0.4″ wide, while a wider version made to hold two to four discs measures 0.95″ in width. These plastic CD cases are often grouped together in paperboard boxes or slipcases that may also contain printed booklets. Such boxed-sets can be several inches wide. More critically, in terms of problems addressed by my invention, these paperboard boxes are slightly taller than the CD cases they contain, having up to 0.10″ in additional height. Any retaining device utilized in an organizer for CD cases must accommodate these various dimensional differences, and one that successfully does so will work equally well with other more uniformly sized media containers and cartridges, such as audio or video tape cassettes, data or microfilm cartridges, and CD ROM, laser and floppy discs. For the sake of economy, all such containers and cartridges will hereafter be referred to as media cases except when pointing out special problems or features of CD cases, or when citing particular kinds of media cases specified in prior art references.
The one problem most common to storing and organizing media cases is the tendency for all such items, when arranged on a cabinet shelf or other such supporting structure in an upright and side-by-side fashion, to lean, fall over, slide, or otherwise migrate into neighboring spaces in the course of being accessed by a user. This makes it difficult to return an item to its original chosen space, or to maintain the overall order and neatness of a collection. While moveable bookends, or followers, can support several such items en-masse, they do not securely retain individual items within a group, nor are spaces left by withdrawn items well preserved for their later return.
Another familiar organizational device is that of partitions spaced apart to form slots or compartments sized to receive individual media cases. This approach has many drawbacks. The simplest re-ordering of such items in a collection requires their repetitive withdrawal and redeposit, one slot at a time, until each and every item has been individually relocated. Furthermore, such partition walls take up space that could otherwise be used to store additional items. Also, such partition walls are neither simple nor inexpensive to manufacture, and because CD cases and their slipcases vary in width, depending on the number of items they contain, and since it is natural for a collection to continually grow and change, any fixed set of differently sized compartments will rarely match or accommodate any user's collection.
A recently disclosed holder/retaining device combination, U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,231 (1992), utilizes a retaining device consisting of a series of consecutively adjacent spring-like fingers or levers. These are distributed along the length of a shelf that is situated over a storage area within a generally rectangular holder. Each such spring-like finger is orientated so that it is perpendicular to the plane of the open side of the holder, and with a broad side facing downward. These fingers resiliently press down against the top sides of deposited tape cartridges to frictionally hold them in place after they are inserted for storage. The referenced holder has vertical compartment walls to separate such items and to keep them from falling over.
If the previously cited holder had no compartments to keep deposited items from falling over, then the sides of its unengaged spring-like fingers would somewhat provide a lateral stop or support for the uppermost portion of adjacent cartridges. If the items to be engaged were narrow and prone to falling over, such as single-disc CD cases or floppy discs, these spring-like levers or fingers would have to be of matching width so that the engaged item's lateral motion would be limited as much as possible. Such a version of U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,231, with no individuated compartments, is available to the public from ALLSOP Inc., of Bellingham, Wash.
In another holder/retaining device combination, U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,669 (1987), an elongated pressure exerting retention strip is similarly located along the down-facing side of a holder's upper shelf to frictionally engage the top sides of microfilm cartridges deposited on the shelf below. The retention strip is constructed from a flat, sheet-like strip of resilient, deflectable material having a plurality of transfer slits running at right angles to its length, thereby forming a series of consecutively adjacent, independently flexible members. The entire retention strip is confined by the shelf structure in such a manner so as to distend these members in the direction of the cartridges to be engaged and held in place. The result is a series of convex, spring-like members that function very much like the spring-like fingers of the previously referenced patent, with similar factors involved in their size and spacing.
In both of these patented holders, narrow media cases such as those holding a single CD would have to be carefully deposited in close lateral alignment with any spring-like member or finger to be properly held in place by it, hence the use of compartments in U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,231. This required alignment could only rarely occur for individual members within a group of CD cases because each variously wide CD case determines the position of its neighbor, unlike the fixed and uniform spacing of the consecutively adjacent spring-like members or fingers under discussion. Also, when a media case is engaged by two spring-like fingers or members at once, which will happen as often as not, it is free to tip sideways until stopped or confined by another media case or by the side of an unengaged spring-like member or finger. General sloppiness and domino effects are inevitable. It would also be troublesome to relocate media cases by sliding them sideways because they will repeatedly catch on the sides of unengaged spring-like members or fingers.
In an alternative embodiment of U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,669, an elongated strip of compressible plastic foam is located along the length of a shelf structure opposed to a shelf below it where microfilm cartridges are deposited for storage. This strip is covered with a layer of mylar or other material having a low frictional sliding surface, and is positioned to frictionally engage such cartridges along their top sides when they are inserted into the shelf space below. This device would exhibit several deficiencies if applied to the retention of CD and other media cases.
For one, most CD cases are of the narrow, single-disc variety, and are, along with the wider multiple disk variety, made of hard plastic with sharp, 90° corners. These would tend to indent and catch upon such a compressible foam strip at the point of initial contact. This problem would be exacerbated by the fact that users often tip media cases at odd angles
Anderson Jerry A.
Arant Gene W.
Cuomo Peter M.
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