US Patent No.: 8,663,185 B2
Inventor(s): Katsumi Mizutani, Kagawa, Japan; Haruki Toda, Kagawa, Japan; Maiko Suzuki, Kagawa, Japan; and Yoshikazu Tanaka, Kagawa, Japan.
Company: Unicharm Corporation, Ehime, Japan.
Filed: 11/20/08
Issued: 3/4/14

A wearing article comprising: a chassis having: a longitudinal direction and a transverse direction; a skin-facing side and a garment-facing side; a front waist region; a rear waist region; a crotch region extending between these front and rear waist regions; and fastening means serving to connect respective opposite side edges of said front and rear waist regions in a detachable manner and thereby to connect said front and rear waist regions to each other in a circumferential direction, said fastening means comprising: hook elements provided on one of said front and rear waist regions and a target fibrous nonwoven fabric provided on other of said front and rear waist regions and adapted to be detachably engaged with said hook elements; and contractible regions adapted to be contractible in the transverse direction are provided inboard of said hook elements as viewed in said transverse direction wherein said hook elements each comprise a first hook element and a second hook element, said first hook elements and said second hook elements being spaced apart from each other in the longitudinal direction, with said second hook elements being position below said first hook elements in the longitudinal direction and said second hook elements and said first hook elements having the same width in the longitudinal direction, and the distance from an upper end of said contractible region to an upper end of said first hook element is different from a distance from a lower end of said contractible region to a lower end of said second hook element as measured in the longitudinal direction.