Squeezeopen

A CIPA case study

When inventor Mark Sheahan saw his mother struggling to open a tin of shoe polish with her arthritic fingers, it started him thinking. Several prototypes and £90,000 in patent fees later, he’s about to start earning serious money from his inventions.

Now that butlers and maids are beyond most people’s pockets, anyone who still likes to have clean, shiny shoes may well have wondered why there isn’t an alternative to those fiddly little metal rivet things that are supposed to prise the lid off your tin of Kiwi or Cherry Blossom, but more often seem to snap off or just rotate feebly and pointlessly.

For most of us, such thoughts evaporate as quickly as they occur. For inventor Mark Sheahan, his musing led to a flash of inspiration, six month’s design work and a series of visits to a patent attorney to make sure that nobody else had come up with the same idea. Making patent applications for his ‘better shoe polish container’ (and now a series of related products) has cost him a lot of money, which he’s raised by bringing in outside investors and by licensing his designs internationally. With worldwide patents filed for both his Squeezeopen and Popi (pronounced like the spinach-eating sailor-man) products, Mark is confident that he now has superior technology for which there’s real market demand and which nobody else can legally copy without his permission.

When simpler is better

Mark’s initial aim was simple: to design a better container for shoe polish. Because of the arthritis in her hands his mother would often struggle to get the lid off, ending up with more polish on the floor than on the shoes. He came up with a design for a semi-flexible container that could easily be opened, just by squeezing the sides (hence the name - Squeezeopen). Hand-carved on a lathe from a solid lump of polypropylene, his first working prototype seemed perfect for its purpose, until he tried it with the intended contents: shoe polish. In spite of reassurances from the polypropylene manufacturer, Mark discovered that the solvent used in shoe polish was also quite effective in dissolving the container, making it totally unsuitable. Time for a rethink.

Heavy investment

By this stage, Mark had invested a lot of money in designing the Squeezeopen container, filing patent applications, making prototypes and setting up tooling for the planned manufacturing. The setback caused by the dissolving polypropylene caused him to reappraise his strategy and consider licensing his design – not only to shoe polish companies (once the dissolving issue was resolved), but to anybody else whose products would benefit from better packaging. With assistance from his patent attorneys (Graham Jones & Co) and from his legal advisors (Bristows), he has secured licensing, evaluation and option deals in the UK, USA, mainland Europe and Japan.

Rather satisfyingly, in light of Mark’s initial motivation in designing the Squeezeopen container, the first product to go into manufacture is being used for an aromatherapy dough, called SquidgeMe. People with arthritic fingers can easily open the container, knead the dough and benefit from the gentle exercise as well as the claimed effects of the aromatherapy ingredients.

Squeeze, fumble or pop?

Mark Sheahan’s range of Popi products are based on a different principle to the Squeezeopen design and are covered by a separate set of patent applications. 

The Squeezeopen closure is opened by squeezing the sides of the lid. The Popi pack operates on different principles: it has a deliberate in-built weakness so that one end of a tubular container, housing a flip lid, is more flexible when pressed. This movement helps to facilitate a hidden novel popping opening action that is fun for kids. Popi is targeted at the confectionery and snack market and was designed to replace existing cardboard tubes and has a number of added safety elements.

It takes determination and an abnormal degree of doggedness to get from a clever idea – like the Squeezeopen container – to the point that Mark Sheahan’s now at, where he’s making a living from his invention. It’s not a career path or a lifestyle for the anxious or the risk-averse. “There have been times when I wondered whether I would ever make any money out of these inventions”, confesses Mark. “However energetic and dynamic you are, getting from a good idea to the point where you make money just takes a lot of time and can be very draining. With most products these days, you have to access international markets to achieve the volumes needed to pay back your investment. That means being prepared to travel and negotiate with people from different cultures – right from the start, I’ve had to be ready to drop everything, pack a suitcase and catch a plane to the USA, Europe or Japan.”

Because he took the trouble to search existing patents and check out the uniqueness of his invention, Mark has been always been confident that he was in a strong selling position. The size of his potential market is mind-bogglingly huge: packets of products like confectionery, coffee, snacks, hand cream, pet food, breakfast cereal or (curiously, these days) even snuff and chewing tobacco sell millions each day. With the potential to earn a fraction of a penny (or cent, or yen) in licence fees for every pack sold, Mark Sheahan knows that the £90,000 or so that it’s cost him to get international patent protection is an investment that will give him a good return.

Mark believes that the quality of his designs, backed by his strong international patents, is why potential buyers now try to impress him, rather than the other way round. “On a recent trade mission trip to Osaka in Japan, the president of one company booked a whole restaurant just for me. Being fed exquisite Japanese food by a Geisha, using chopsticks, must rate as one of the more pleasant experiences of my international travels. That was my James Bond moment - now I’m waiting for my fifteen minutes of fame,” Mark muses.

The life of an independent inventor, without the back-up of a big corporate structure, can sometimes be a rather solitary and scary existence, Mark readily concedes. “However, except for the occasional financial stress, I love this way of life. And I do find it enormously helpful to meet up with people in a similar situation and share experiences. I am involved with several inventors’ clubs, which are effectively mutual self-help groups for individual inventors like me. Whatever problem you’re facing – financing, patent disputes, licence agreements, where to get your prototypes manufactured – there’s usually someone who’s faced something similar and who’s prepared to offer advice or put you in touch with the person who helped them to find a solution. And I’ve been very fortunate in my choice of patent attorney. He’s been a trusted adviser and very understanding – to the extent of occasionally being very patient for his fees. My advice to any budding inventors is that if you have a “bit of an idea”, as your first port of call, join an inventors club, the British Library (New Business & IP Centre) and find yourself a good patent attorney’’.

For more information, contact:

Squeezeopen

Peter Prowse: 01372 271234

Ted Blake, CIPA: 020 7405 9450

Mark Sheahan, CompGen Ltd: 020 8692 8455

Graham Jones OBE, Graham Jones & Co: 020 8858 4039