The One-Piece Combination Clip was granted on July 13, 1976 as U.S. Patent No. 3,968,546. It is known as the first Trapper Keeper®.

The one-piece molded clip for holding a tablet or sheets of paper on a clip board or other supporting structure and including a pencil or pen holder formed integrally with the clip.  The clip has a base portion which may either be provided with openings for rivets to attach the clip to a supporting structure or with integrally formed studs.  A spring is integrally formed with the base and consists of a first wall which projects upwardly from the base and a second wall which projects outwardly and downwardly and terminates in a gripper disposed beneath the plane in which the lower surface of the base lies to provide increased gripping power when the clip is attached to a surface.  The pen or pencil holder consists of a slot defined by the upwardly projecting wall of the spring and another wall extending in spaced, approximately parallel relationship thereto.

Patent-Illustration-Trapper-Keeper_Page_1 Patent-Illustration-Trapper-Keeper_Page_2

Suiter Swantz IP, Intellectual Property Lawyer, Omaha, NE

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