Appeal No. 97-4294 Page 19
Application No. 08/294,155
Jackson discloses that the binder serves to hold together
the components of the absorbent composite through mechanical
entanglement, adhesion or both. The binder used by Jackson is
binder fibers which can be relatively short staple fibers or
more continuous fibers such as meltblown and spunbond fibers.
Staple length fibers range in size from about 6 to 40 mm with
denier sizes ranging from about 1.5 to 6 denier. Examples of
staple fibers include straight or crimped single polymer
staple fibers made from polyolefins, nylons or polyesters.
Fusible synthetic pulps, such as PLEXAFIL from E. I. du PontŪ
de Nemours of
Wilmington, Del., may also be used for bonding purposes but
typically have fiber sizes outside the aforementioned range.
Multiconstituent fibers such as bicomponent fibers also may be
used. Such bicomponent fibers can provide both mechanical and
adhesive bonding when heated to bond their sheaths to
surrounding materials. Jackson teaches (column 8, lines 10-
16) that
suitable binder fibers are those which have a uniform
polymer composition across their diameters or they may be
non-uniform or even have distinct regions as with
bicomponent fibers. The fibers also can have both
regular and irregular-shaped cross--sections and they can
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