This Plucky Inventor Turned Our World Upside Down With His Patent

This marketing masterstroke by Heinz, a food processing company, in the early part of this century owes much of its success to the breakthrough made by Paul Brown and his partner over a decade earlier in a small injection molding shop.

Inventors, you have all plunged your knife into a glass ketchup bottle to squeeze a little extra sauce onto your delicious fries. But inverting the bottle (this time made of plastic) and using a patented self-dispensing valve to smooth out this intricate culinary operation is touch of historical ingenuity that surely brings a smile to your face.

If the words “try, try and try again” mean anything to you, they were a religion for Paul Brown who invented the tiny valve found in squeezable plastic bottles, including shampoo and ketchup.

It would take over 111 prototypes, several depleted credit cards, and a hat-in-hand plea to his mom and friends for more cash before the breakthrough finally came.

Yet when it did come, his invention would solve so many frustrating problems in such a clever and neat manner that I’m sure all of you intrepid inventors out there wonder about the genius entrepreneur behind it -- and why YOU didn’t invent it YOURSELF!

Such is the case of Paul Brown and his valve patent. Not only did it completely change the way people pour their ketchup, but it also made Brown a multimillionaire just a few short years later.

Like many other inventors, Paul Brown was working a steady job as the owner of a precision molding company by day. He wondered if he could invent a plastic bottle closure that would open enough to allow even and controlled dispensing of the product when squeezed.

Once the pressure was released, the bottle closure would close tightly enough to ensure that no messy leakage occurred. Like many others reading this, Brown was no stranger to patents or their necessity in the process of protecting his intellectual property. In fact, he started applying for patents in July 1988 under the name of his company, Liquid Molding Systems, Inc.

It was around that time that a client approached him with a request for a valve that enabled shampoo bottles to be stored upside down. The caveat: they couldn't leak while doing so. Brown, and an employee Tim Socier, worked primarily with liquid silicone and a molding press and started designing prototypes.

Brown was averse to computers, but Socier was skilled with computer-assisted design (CAD). The combination of their skills complemented each other.

As any inventor knows, the road to success is rarely smooth -- and it definitely wasn't for this pair either. They came up with a silicone valve shaped like a dome with an opening that looked like the letter X.

Its petal-like flaps opened when the bottle was squeezed. Once the person stopped squeezing, the flaps closed and the substance inside the bottle stayed there.

This frustrating experience continued for over 100 prototypes putting a serious dent in Brown’s wallet. Just like Sarah Blakely, Alex Gomez and Jay Sorenson, this inventor flew without a net and was as stubborn as they come.