BuzzBallz LLC, the Carrollton company that built a national ready-to-drink cocktail brand around a hand-sized plastic sphere, received a patent for a container that pairs a plastic body with a metal pop-top lid.

The sole inventor listed on Patent No. 12698123-B1 is Merrilee Kick of Plano, who founded BuzzBallz in 2009. Her startup story began while she was teaching at Plano West High School, getting a divorce and looking for a business venture to help pay the bills. She went back to school, and BuzzBallz came out of her master’s degree thesis. It became one of the nation’s few woman-owned distilleries and wineries, and Kick went on to sell the company to New Orleans-based Sazerac in 2024. She remains the company’s founder and a strategic adviser.

How the container works

The patent covers a container body with a side wall and a bottom wall, topped by a lid carrying a pop-top arm. The arm pivots against a weakened area in the lid to open the container. According to the filing, the body is made of plastic and the lid of metal — a combination that allows a molded body to carry a conventional pull-tab opening.

The described design also includes a vertical neck, a lip around the body opening and a bottom wall that can be shaped with a center protrusion or radial depressions. The application was filed Sept. 12, 2024, and issued 691 days later.

Other patents the week of Aug. 4

Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas) was once again the largest patent recipient, with 21 patents — more than triple the next-highest total. Its patents included inventions related to analog circuit design, semiconductor packaging and test architecture.

Electricity and physics classifications together accounted for 98 of the region’s 159 patents. Other organizations with notable patents that week include:

StaCyc LLC (Fort Worth) received two design patents (Nos. D1138918-S1 and D1138919-S1) related to the ornamental design of an electric bicycle. Both were filed on Nov. 5, 2024.

7-Eleven Inc. (Irving) received patent No. 12699750-B2 for a system that improves how a store platform recognizes merchandise. When the system misidentifies an item and a person supplies the correct information, it feeds the correct identifier and captured images back into its identification model, retraining it to associate the two.

Astura Medical Inc. (Irving) received patent No. 12697151-B2 for a tool that releases the tulip assembly seated on a pedicle screw during spinal surgery. Inventors Keith Klausman and Thomas Purcell are both in Irving.

Renibus Therapeutics Inc. (Southlake) won Patent No. 12697311-B2 covering tetrahydrocurcumin compositions along with methods of making and using them. Renibus Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company currently focused on cardio, renal and metabolic diseases.

Patent information is provided by Joe Chiarella, founder of patent analytics company Patent Index and publisher of The Inventiveness Index. For additional details on the patents granted below, search the USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database.

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