Distinctive

Two ways to be distinctive

On this page13

The first way Which is a high bar for a container catalog So the first way is not a shelf purchase The second way Which is printing And that is what makes a stock article compliant A registered trademark is the strongest of the five Our shelf offers the substrate and not the mark Which is the gap, stated exactly And a printed seal costs almost nothing extra The first limb is for a designed package Ask for a printed seal by name References

Undulplicable, or printed. The second is the one anybody actually uses.

The first way

Distinctive by design, meaning packaging that cannot be duplicated with commonly available materials or through commonly available processes.

Which is a high bar for a container catalog

Everything we sell is made with commonly available materials by commonly available processes. That is what a catalog is.

So the first way is not a shelf purchase

It is a bespoke package, or a feature somebody engineered. Nothing in a standard range is undulplicable by definition.

The second way

One or more indicators or barriers to entry that employ an identifying characteristic, with the examples given as a pattern, a name, a registered trademark, a logo or a picture.

Which is printing

All five examples are things printed or applied. The distinctiveness comes from the mark rather than from the construction.

And that is what makes a stock article compliant

A standard induction seal becomes distinctive when your name or logo is printed on it, because a blank replacement no longer matches.

A registered trademark is the strongest of the five

Because duplicating it is a separate wrong. The list runs from a pattern, which anyone could approximate, to a trademark, which nobody may.

Our shelf offers the substrate and not the mark

53 heat induction seals and 18 pressure sensitive liners among 128 closures. Whether any of them is printed is not a field we publish.

Which is the gap, stated exactly

Not that we lack the feature. We lack the attribute that decides whether the feature satisfies the distinctiveness limb.

And a printed seal costs almost nothing extra

It is a standard converting step rather than a bespoke package, which is the practical reason the second limb is the one everybody uses.

The first limb is for a designed package

Something engineered to be hard to reproduce, which is not a catalog purchase and is not what this shelf offers.

Ask for a printed seal by name

It is an ordinary thing to order and it is the difference between a barrier and a distinctive barrier.

References

21 CFR 211.132(b)(1): "A tamper-evident package is one having one or more indicators or barriers to entry which, if breached or missing, can reasonably be expected to provide visible evidence to consumers that tampering has occurred." The same paragraph requires the packaging to be "distinctive by design or by the use of one or more indicators or barriers to entry that employ an identifying characteristic (e.g., a pattern, name, registered trademark, logo, or picture)", with distinctive by design meaning packaging that "cannot be duplicated with commonly available materials or through commonly available processes." The section reaches an over-the-counter human drug product packaged for retail sale and accessible to the public while held for sale, and nothing here asserts it binds any particular activity. law.cornell.edu

The Davis Pack Supply catalog, measured 19 October 2026. The only tamper-evident capability among the 128 closures indexed to this group is a liner: 53 carry a heat induction seal and 18 a pressure sensitive liner, with 11 F217, 11 foam, 10 Plastis standard, 6 PE foam, 1 F217 and PS, 8 recorded as No Liner and 10 unrecorded. There is no tamper-evident closure and no sealing disc on the shelf at all. We publish the liner type and not whether it carries a printed pattern, name, trademark, logo or picture.

Written from 21 CFR 211.132 and from the catalog as it stood on 19 October 2026. That section reaches an over-the-counter human drug product packaged for retail sale and accessible to the public while held for sale; a kit assembled at home from bulk is not that, and nothing here asserts the section binds any particular activity. The only tamper-evident capability on this shelf is a liner, and we publish the liner type and not whether it carries a printed identifying characteristic, which is the attribute the distinctiveness requirement turns on.