Eye drop dispenser attachable positioner

An eye drop dispenser attachable positioner having a forward portion having pressure sensitive adhesive means thereon for attaching the positioner to the side of an eye drop dispenser, the positioner having a rearward terminal end portion adapted to engage the upper portion of a person's nose while the positioner is held for steadying and positioning the dispenser preparatory to squeezing eye fluid therefrom.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
Eye drop medicines are very expensive and there has been great waste of 
such medicines because persons have aimed them badly whereby they miss the 
eye. 
Unfortunately, many people who require eye drop medicine of the expensive 
types are themselves elderly persons who can least afford to waste 
expensive medicine. 
Many of the elderly have considerable difficulty in controlling their hands 
with the steadiness required to aim an eye drop dispenser accurately 
because of loss of coordination due to old age and also palsey. 
There has been placed on the market a protrusion extending from an eye drop 
dispenser in parallelism with the nozzle thereof, the protrusion having an 
outer end adapted to rest on the upper portion of the nose and being 
rigidly fixed to the dispenser, and being formed of thermoplastic material 
of one piece with the dispenser for guiding the positioning of the nozzle 
so as to dispense fluid at a position to one side of the nose engaging 
terminal end of the protrusion which is the proper spacing for causing the 
nozzle to be aimed at the user's eye. 
However, the protrusion mentioned has been serving only a single brand of 
eye drops to the applicant's knowledge, that brand being one that has a 
very special dispenser with a fluid holding chamber elongated transversely 
of the direction of fluid ejection so as to provide a place on the 
rearward end thereof for supporting the protrusion. 
The result has been a very highly specialized product serving only a minute 
portion of the eye medicine dispensing field. The only portion being 
served has been that portion which uses one single brand of eye drops 
contained in one single type of special container, the eye drops being a 
brand that is dispensed without prescription. 
However, the vast majority of eye drop conainers are used without any means 
for their positioning and resulting in the waste of medicine mentioned. 
Among this vast majority of eye drop containers are the prescription 
medicine containers which are usually provided with a forward portion 
which is substantially cylindrical in the usual and common way which 
bottles have always been made. For these prescription medicines there has 
been no way heretofore conceived of facilitating their positioning during 
dispensing. 
Also there has been no way conceived heretofore of positioning dispensers 
of the many dozens if not hundreds of brands of eye medicines which are 
sold without perscription, the vast majority of which are likewise sold in 
containers having substantially cylindrical forward portions sometimes 
called lower portions. 
One of the problems in conceiving of a positioner suitable to be attached 
by a user to a standard eye drop medicine bottle is the problem of how to 
attach the positioner to the bottle in some way without interfering with 
the necessary squeezing of the bottle for dispensing the fluid. That is a 
problem which does not arise in the case of the one-piece protrusion and 
dispenser bottle bacause the attachment portions and the squeezable 
flexible dispenser bottle are one and the same. 
I have solved this problem with my concept of using flexible pressure 
sensitive adhesive for securing the body of the positioner to the medicine 
bottle, the pressure sensitive adhesive being a tape which is itself 
flexible and, therefore, does not interfere with the squeezing of the 
bottle for dispensing. 
A problem, however, arises in the weakness of the attachment of such a tape 
to the body of a positioner and which is solved by my concept of having 
the positioner have an unusually large area at a portion near the tape, 
the area not being so large as to interfere with the squeezing of the 
bottle, however, because of the necessary relative lesser flexibility of 
the large attachment portion and the tape itself. 
Another problem resides in the proper positioning of the positioner on the 
bottle. This I have solved by designing the positioner to be used with the 
advice that the positioner nose engaging terminal end is to be rested on a 
flat surface at a time when the terminal end of the nozzel of the bottle 
is rested on the same flat surface, whereby the nose engageable portion 
and the nozzle terminal end will be positioned directly to the side of 
each other, even though the type of bottle involved might be twice as long 
as a smaller bottle on which the same positioner of this invention must 
also be able to function. 
Still another problem is bottle shape. Many bottles are not cylindrical 
and, therefore, present side surfaces which are almost flat and end 
surfaces that are rounded, but which are so narrow and sharply rounded as 
to present a much different surface to which to attach than is the case 
with a cylindrical bottle. It is, therefore, an object of this invention 
to provide my concept of a positioner having a tape attachment portion 
which is able to adapt itself to bottles of any shape. 
I discovered that tapes available are not strong enough. I have conceived 
that by placing a flexible plastic layer on the outside of the tape and 
substantially co-extensive with the tape, with the plastic layer of 
greater strength than the tape and disposed between the tape and the body 
of the dispenser, that a construction of sufficient strength is provided. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
This invention provides an eye drop dispenser attachable positioner having 
a body provided with a rearward terminal end nose-engaging surface having 
a horizontal width sufficient for spanning horizontally across the upper 
portion of a human user's nose, said body having a forward portion 
provided with a side surface defining a bottle-facing side surface which 
is elongated forwardly and rearwardly and which is offset approximately 
11/2 inches from the center between the sides of said nose-engaging 
surface so that when said nose-engaging surface is against the upper 
portion of the nose of the average adult user and an eye drop medicine 
dispenser bottle, of approximately 3/8 inch from its center to its closest 
side adjacent to said bottle-facing surface of said body, then the center 
of the bottle will be disposed approximately on a horizontal line directly 
forwardly from the eye of an average adult user, and means for attaching 
an eye dropper medicine bottle to the said bottle-facing side surface of 
said body, said attaching means having an adhesive bonding means for 
facing said bottle. 
Another advantage is for the positioner to be removable from said bottle 
without the destruction of said positioner and with the possibility of the 
reuse of the attaching means on another bottle. 
This invention further provides for said adhesive bonding means to be a 
tape having pressure sensitive adhesive coating on both sides for economy 
of construction and for flexibility of fitting to the bottle. 
A further objective is to provide the body with a greater thickness, as 
seen in rear elevation, adjacent said side surface than the general 
thickness of said body. 
Still another objective is to provide the construction of said attaching 
means in the form of a piece of tape, having pressure sensitive adhesive 
on that side thereof which faces away from said body for attachment to a 
bottle, and means attaching the pressure sensitive adhesive to said side 
of said body. 
Yet another object is to provide an attachment means as above described and 
in which tape is involved, but further in which a strip of plastic of 
substantially greater strength than said tape is attached to that side of 
said tape which is closest to said body, said strip of plastic being 
attached to said body, and being flexible for adapting to engage in 
abutment across the majority of its surface besides of bottles of various 
shapes. 
Another object is to provide the use of tape, each side of which has on it 
pressure sensitive adhesive.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
An eye drop dispenser and positioner assembly of this invention is 
generally indicated at 10 in FIG. 1 and has an eye drop dispenser bottle 
30 to which an eye drop dispenser attachable positioner 20 is attached. 
Eye drop bottles are, for the most part, provided with a cylindrical lower 
portion generally indicated at 32 of a diameter of about 3/4 of an inch of 
7/8 of an inch, or in other words, approximately 3/4 of an inch diameter 
and 3/8 of an inch radius. 
The bottles 30 each have a cap 34 having at its forward end an opening 36 
through which droplets of eye treatment fluid can exude at times when the 
bottle is squeezed and for that reason the cylindrical portion 32 is 
flexible. 
The positioner 20 has a body 44 provided with a rearward-terminal-end 
nose-engaging surface 50 having a horizontal width as seen from left to 
right in FIG. 1, sufficient for spanning across the upper portion of a 
human user's nose. 
The body 44 has a forward portion 60 provided with a side surface 64, 
defining a bottle-facing side surface which is elongated forwardly and 
rearwardly, such as between its forward end 72 and its rearwrd end 74 as 
seen in FIG. 1. 
The side surface 64 has a portion 65 which is closest to the nose-engaging 
surface 50, offset horizontally from the center 78 of the nose-engaging 
surface 50, the center 78 being the center between the sides on the right 
and left of the nose-engaging surface 50, the offset being approximately 
11/2 inches as measured horizontally along line 5' when looking at the 
rear of the positioner, so that when the nose-engaging surface 50 is 
against the upper portion of the nose of the average adult user, then when 
an eye drop medicine dispenser bottle, such as shown at 30, is disposed 
with its closest side 82 adjacent to the bottle-facing surface 64 of the 
positioner 20, then the center of the bottle 30, which latter is shown at 
C in FIG. 2, will be disposed approximately on a horizontal line directly 
forwardly from the eye on the average adult user. 
In FIG. 2 it can be seen that the nose-engaging surface 50 has a 
substantial vertical width greater than the central portion 154 of the 
body 40 to which it is attached for the comfort of the user and for the 
economy of the body portion 154. 
In FIG. 2 it can be seen that the bottle-facing side surface 64 is wider 
vertically than the central portion 154 of the body 44 so as to provide 
the surface 64 with a substantial width so that it can be secured to the 
bottle 30 better. 
The surface 64 is secured to the bottle 30 either by means of a pressure 
sensitive adhesive tape 210, defining a flexible securing means 220 or 
else it is secured by a laminated flexible assembly or a modified flexible 
securing means 220a shown in FIG. 3. 
The tape 210 has pressure sensitive adhesive on its surface 242 which faces 
the bottle 30 and also has pressure sensitive adhesive 244 on its outer 
surface and secured to the surface 64. With this construction, the 
flexibility of the tape 210 permits its removal from one bottle and 
attachment to another bottle for the repeated use of the positioner 20. 
In the laminated modification of FIG. 3, shown at 220a, the flexible 
attachment 220a has an inner portion 270 which is a tape and which is 
provided with an adhesive surface 272 on its inner side for engaging the 
bottle 30 and has on its outer side a very thin flexible, plastic, 
partially circular member 280 which can be called a mounting member 280. 
The mounting member 280 is partially circular when seen in the vertical 
cross-section or when seen from the rearward end of the bottle 32 looking 
along an axis 288 of the bottle, the extent of the member 280 and of the 
tape 270, preferrably both being sufficient to more than cover half of the 
outer circumference of the bottle at its cylindrical portion 32, the 
laminated member 220a being coextensive with the member 220 of FIG. 2 for 
length so that it can be understood from looking at FIG. 2. 
The mounting 280 can be molded separately from and detached to the 
remainder of the positioner 20 or it can be formed integral and of one 
piece with the remainder of the positioner 20 but in either case it is 
attached to the forward portion 60 of the positioner 20 firmly by either 
one piece attachment or binding means, a numeral 292 in FIG. 3 serving to 
indicate part of the position of binding means for that purpose. 
In operation, the flexibility of the tape 210 or of the laminated structure 
220a are either one sufficient to permit the compressing of the flexible 
bottle portion 32 so that with the postioner in the use position, the 
operator simply tilts his head back so that the squeezing of the bottle 32 
will deposit a drop of fluid directly in his eye. 
To do the other eye, the positioner is turned upside down so that its 
bottle is then on the opposite side from the position shown in FIG. 1. 
The stiffer portion of the body in FIG. 2 adjacent to the tape is of a very 
short width so that the positioner can adapt to square bottles with flat 
sides. Depending upon the kind of adhesive or bonding means used the 
portion of the positioner adjacent the tape might be of lesser vertical 
thickness adjacent to the bottle for adapting it best to fitting against 
flat sided bottles.