The present invention relates to self-adhesive labels. In particular, the present invention relates to self-adhesive labels of multi-laminar construction in which the label incorporates a booklet or folded sheet so as to provide a large surface area for carrying printed information which is greater than the surface area of the footprint of the label. The labels of the present invention have particular application in the labelling of pharmaceutical products.
A variety of so-called leaflet labels or booklet labels are known in the art and a typical label construction is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,403 in the name of David J Instance. In such labels, an individual folded leaflet or booklet is carried on a self-adhesive base or support piece which itself is releasably adhered to a backing of release material The folded leaflet or booklet is often overlaminated with a self-adhesive transparent plastics layer.
Such labels can be relatively expensive to manufacture because of the need to print substantially all of the text, apart from that on the base by multi-colour printing on a single sheet of relatively expensive coated paper to be subsequently folded or formed into a booklet or leaflet. Furthermore, the known labels can suffer from the disadvantage that when several versions of the same label construction corresponding to slight variations in the product to be labelled are required, it is necessary to have a separate sheet printed for each version of the label. This is relatively inefficient to manufacture, particularly for short manufacturing runs for the labels, because this requires the folded leaflet or booklet parts to be manufactured to order or held in stock for each label version Finally, such labels are employed to label pharmaceutical products. In order to protect consumers of pharmaceutical products. It is essential that proper quality control is exercised to ensure that the correct folded leaflet or booklet is married up with the correct underlying base support piece.
The present invention aims to provide improved self-adhesive labels.
More particularly, it is an object of the present invention to provide lower cost leaflet labels or booklet labels. particularly for short run multiple brand name versions of the same label.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a multi-component leaflet label having improved quality control features to ensure correct manufacture.