Portable sectional flooring system

Claim 1

Portable sectionalized flooring for a basketball court or the like comprising: a plurality of equal width floor sections directly supported on a planar base surface including first and second groups of sections, each group having a different length, said sections being assembled in rows to form a flooring area which defines a plane with the different lengths of said groups positioned within said rows to dispose the joints between sections in adjacent rows in staggered relationship; each said section having interengaged tongue and groove strips defining a floor surface, each said section having an exposed tongue extending along one side of the section and an exposed groove extending along the other side of the section, said exposed tongue and said exposed groove on the sections in adjacent rows being directly interengaged, at least one end of each said section having projecting fingers defined by selected strips of the section projecting beyond strips intermediate said selected strips whereby said fingers on adjoining longitudinally aligned sections form interlocking fingers joints in each of said rows; and latch means connected to each said section disposed beneath said floor surface interlocking adjoining floor sections within each of said rows and interlocking adjacent rows within said flooring area, said latch means including a series of latch devices with each said device having a pair of separate interengageable elements, said elements of each device being connected, respectively, adjacent the edges of two adjoining floor sections, said pair of elements of each said device being interlockingly interengaged preventing transverse separation of adjacent sections in adjacent rows and preventing longitudinal separation of adjoining longitudinally aligned sections within each row, said latch devices being interengaged and disengaged solely by swinging said two adjoining floor sections relative to each other in said plane of said flooring area.