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AssigneeMilliken & Company
InventorsRichard A. Bittner, Steven W. Cox, Ronald Magee, Jonathan C. McCay
Estimating the term…
Provided herein is a process for randomly patterning a plurality of carpet tiles, each tile having a composite pattern containing at least a base pattern and an overlay pattern. When installed, the random order of patterning results in random tile placement and an overall random appearance. The overlay patterns are randomly chosen from a library of patterns until each individual pattern has been used to create a tile series. The overlay patterns may be manipulated by rotating, mirror-imaging, rotating and mirror-imaging, or repositioning to produce additional variations and increase the number of tiles in the series. The base pattern may optionally be manipulated before being incorporated into the composite pattern. A tile collection, containing such randomly ordered composite patterns, is also described.
A series of carpet tiles in which each carpet tile carries a composite pattern comprising at least an underlying pattern that is common from tile to tile and an overlay pattern that is randomly selected from a predetermined library of such overlay patterns, wherein each overlay pattern is selected as part of a composite pattern to form a complete series, wherein the series of carpet tiles comprises at least a first carpet tile and a second carpet tile, said carpet tiles having different composite patterns thereon formed by rotating or mirror-imaginq the underlying pattern or the overlay pattern of the first carpet tile to form the composite pattem of the second carpet tile.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.