Floor carpets are in common use in homes, businesses and transportation vehicles such as automobiles, buses, trains, aircrafts and marine crafts. It is common for certain areas of such carpets to receive substantially more foot traffic and, thus, more wear as compared with other areas. In order to accommodate such uneven wear, floor coverings such as floor mats are frequently placed on such carpets in high traffic areas. A common problem in the use of floor mats, however, is the tendency of the floor mats to slip on the underlying carpet. To minimize the slippage of floor mats on, for example, cut-loop pile carpets in automobiles, floor mats have been designed with a plurality of downwardly extending cone-shaped projections known as "bristles," "nubs," or "nibs." Such cone-shaped projections typically have maximum diameters in the range of 2.5 to 6 millimeters (mm), and minimum diameters in the range of 1.5 to 2 mm. Furthermore, the density of such projections is typically in the range of 8 to 13 projections per square inch. Efforts by automotive manufacturers to reduce weight and cost of their products, however, have resulted in a shift away from cut-loop pile for floor carpet constructions to lighter-weight, less costly non-woven needle punched constructions.
Other known means of minimizing slippage of a floor mat include attaching mating fastening means to the underside of the floor mat and the top surface of a particular floor carpet. U.S. Pat. No. 4,968,548, for example, discloses a removable floor cover having a plurality of one of the elements of a hook and loop fastening system attached thereto, for use with a floor surface having a plurality of the other elements of a hook and loop fastening system attached thereto. Because of the high cost of hook and loop fastening systems and the additional labor required to attach the fastening elements to both the cover layer and the floor surface, this design is relatively costly to manufacture and install.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds