Saturday, March 14, 2026

Oh, patents! The Coca-Cola bottle (3)

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

A third Coca-Cola bottle design patent, USD105529, titled Design for a bottle, was issued on August 3, 1937, to Eugene Kelly, a citizen of the United States, residing in Toronto, Canada, who then assigned the patent to The Coca-Cola Company, in Wilmington, Delaware.  This was the last design patent filed for Coca-Cola glass bottles, before the bottle was trademarked, in 1960, and therefore protected from use by others for as long as the trademark was renewed and fees paid. 

The 1937 Coca-Cola bottle design patent was issued upon expiration of the 1923 Christmas Day patent, in other words, exactly 14 years later. Experts have noted that the patent drawing for the 1937 bottle appears exaggerated, almost caricatured, presumably so that the design could appear different enough to be patentable (Lockhart & Porter, 2010). Thus, the 1937 design patent depicted the distinctive bottle contours as almost elliptical, to clearly differentiate the Coca-Cola bottle from any other bottle on the market. The patent design also depicted a space of interrupted contours, around the bottle, reserved for the Coca-Cola embossed logo, which is not shown, again to protect the secrecy of the design. 

Below, the extracted 1937 Coca-Cola bottle design patent, Figure 1, depicting a side view of the Coca-Cola bottle design. The patent drawing appears next to a Georgia Green marketed embodiment of the design, showing the embossed CocaCola logo and patent number D105529 in the reserved space. The location where the bottle was produced is embossed on the bottom. As also shown below in this case, the bottle was produced in Roanoke, Va.  

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References
The Coca-Cola Company: The History of the Coca-Cola Contour Bottle. The Coca-Cola Company website. 
Lockhart, B. and B. Porter (Sept- Oct., 2010). The dating game: Tracking the Hobble-Skirt Coca-Cola Bottle. Society for Historical Archeology. 

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