US 4,547,919 · Granted 1985-10-22
The Inflatable Furniture Patent That Adds Hidden Strength
Imagine an inflatable couch or air mattress made of two plastic sheets heat-welded together. This patent adds a third reinforcing layer that creates extra air pockets, making the furniture stiffer, stronger, and able to bounce back into shape even at the edges where things normally wear out fastest.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers an inflatable product with two outer sheets welded at the edges and along parallel seams to create separate air chambers, plus a reinforcing outer sheet heat-sealed to create additional compartments that sit on top. What's protected is this specific sandwich structure—the way the three layers are fused and the pattern of seams that create multiple independent air pockets for both strength and shape recovery.
Why it matters
This patent solves a real durability problem in inflatable furniture: the edges and seams are usually the first places to fail or look saggy. By adding reinforcing air compartments over the original seams, the design keeps the structure stiffer longer and lets bent or creased edges pop back into place. For manufacturers, this means furniture that lasts longer and looks better, which reduces returns and warranty claims.
Real-world use
When you sit on an inflatable pool lounger or air bed and it maintains its firmness even after heavy use, you're experiencing a design that likely borrowed from this structural approach of nested air chambers working together.
Original USPTO abstract
An inflatable article, having a pair of gas impervious sheets which are heat welded together at their edges to form an envelope and are provided with parallelly spaced apart longitudinal first seams to define a plurality of air compartments between the pair of sheets, is provided with a reforming and reinforcing outer inflatable multiple-compartmented unit formed, on the wall of the envelope, by heat-sealing an additional outer sheet to one of the pair of gas impervious sheets at the edge portions and at the lines which lie between each two of the first longitudinal seams to form second seams whereby the article will achieve a stronger and stiffer construction and the acute fused edge portions thereof can be reformed by the expanded superimposed inflatable outer units adjacent to the edge portions.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 4,547,919
- Filing date
- 1983-02-17
- Grant date
- 1985-10-22
- Assignee
- Cheng Chung Wang
- Inventor(s)
- WANG; CHENG-CHUNG
- CPC class
- A42B3/122
Want to file your own patent?
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