Plastic shopping bag having a reinforced handle portion, and method of fabricating the same

Claim 1

A plastic shopping bag comprising a pair of opposing bag faces fabricated of plastic film material joined to one another to form a closed bottom edge for said bag, a pair of closed side edges spaced from one another and extending trans-versely to said bottom edge, and an open mouth located between said side edges in spaced relation to said bottom edge, each of said faces defining a handle portion for said bag adjacent said open mouth, the handle portion on each of said faces comprising an integral portion of said face shaped in a wave configura-tion symmetrical about a center line disposed substantially equidistant between said side edges of said bag with the lowest points of said wave configuration being located adja-cent the side edges of said bag and the highest point of said wave configuration being located substantially on said center line, the handle portion on each of said faces including a strip of plastic material which is of heavier gauge than the faces of said bag, said heavier gauge strip extending across said handle portion in a direction generally parallel to said bottom edge of said bag, said heavier gauge strip including a lower boundary edge which intersects said wave configuration at locations between said lowest and highest points of said wave configuration that are spaced inwardly of the side edges of said bag.

Claim 9

The method of forming a plurality of plastic shopping bags comprising the steps of providing an elongated tube of plastic film material having a flattened configuration which defines a pair of elongated tube faces that are disposed closely adjacent to one another and each of which faces in-cludes an elongated strip of plastic material that is of heavier gauge than the remainder of said faces, said strips of heavier gauge material being positioned in coextensive overlapping relation to one another in the direction of elon-gation of said tube at locations on said tube faces substan-tially equidistant from the edges of said tube faces, the width of each of said strips between said edges being sub-stantially less than the width of its associated tube face, cutting through said adjacent tube faces along a cutting line which has a cyclically recurring wave configuration extending in the direction of elongation of said tube faces and along said coextensive overlapping strips of heavier gauge material, the wavelength of said wave configuration being substantially equal to the desired width of one of said shopping bags at the mouth of said shopping bag, the amplitude of said cutting line wave configuration being greater than the widths of said hea-vier gauge strips whereby spaced crests of said wave configur-ation cut through the film material of said tube faces at positions outside of said heavier gauge strips, and thereafter cutting said tube faces along a plurality of transverse seam lines which extend respectively between said spaced crests and the outer edges of said flattened tube of plastic film material.

Claim 10

The method of forming a plurality of plastic shopping bags comprising the steps of providing an elongated tube of plastic film material having a flattened configuration which defines a pair of elongated tube faces that are disposed closely adjacent to one another and each of which faces in-cludes an elongated strip of plastic material that is of heavier gauge than the remainder of said faces, said strips of heavier gauge material being positioned in coextensive overlapping relation to one another in the direction of elon-gation of said tube at locations on said tube faces substan-tially equidistant from the edges of said tube faces, the width of each of said strips between said edges being sub-stantially less than the width of its associated tube face, cutting through said adjacent tube faces along a cutting line which has a cyclically recurring wave configuration extending in the direction of elongation of said tube faces and along said coextensive overlapping strips of heavier gauge material, the wavelength of said wave configuration being substantially equal to the desired width of one of said shopping bags at the mouth of said shopping bag, the amplitude of said cutting line wave configuration being greater than the widths of said hea-vier gauge strips whereby spaced crests of said wave configur-ation cut through the film material of said tube faces at positions outside of said heavier gauge strips, and thereafter cutting said tube faces along a plurality of transverse seam lines which extend respectively between said spaced crests and the outer edges of said flattened tube of plastic film material.