I guess if they get the patent then Burger King can’t give you their’s “your way” because that would infringe on the process.
McDonald’s puts patent on sandwiches
McDonald’s wants to own the rights to how a sandwich is made.
The fast-food chain has applied for a patent relating to the ‘method and apparatus’ used to prepare the snack.
The burger company says owning the ‘intellectual property rights’ would help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.
It also wants to cut down on the time needed to put together a sandwich, thought to have been dreamt up by the Earl of Sandwich in 1762.
The 55-page patent, which has been filed in the US and Europe, covers the ‘simultaneous toasting of a bread component’.
Garnishes of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, as well as salt, pepper and ketchup, are inserted into a cavity in a ‘sandwich delivery tool’.
The ‘bread component’ is placed over the cavity and the assembly tool is inverted to tip out the contents. Finally, the filling is placed in the ‘bread component’.
It explains: ‘Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich.’
Lawrence Smith-Higgins, of the UK Patent Office, said: ‘McDonald’s or anyone else cannot get retrospective exclusive rights to making a sandwich.
‘They might have a novel device, but it could be quite easy for someone to make a sandwich in a similar way without infringing their claims.’
McDonald’s said: ‘These applications are not intended to prevent anyone from using previous methods for making sandwiches.’
It is really past time to line the lawyers up and shoot them.
Mmmm… Smuckers already claims a patent on the peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7408857/
I’ve never been a big fan of McDonalds and the McMarketing that they use to push the horribly unhealthy food on kids. This sandwich patent idea is so incredibly stupid it just makes me sick. I’m done with McDonalds.
The only thing more stupid than their applying for the patent is that the idiots in the US patent office will probably grant it!
Tom
help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.
That’s the most boring ethos imaginable, an accountancy and marketing perspective rather than one that has anything to do with art, craft or taste. Mind you, if your illustration is of a typical McDonald’s sandwich I’m not surprised as it looks like something that would be eaten voluntarily only under duress.
If I buy a sandwich I want to be excited by it, to anticipate just how it might taste, savour the complementary elements, perhaps find something I don’t at first like and then realise that it adds depth or piquancy. I want something that differs day to day and place to place because it’s made with skill and care and imagination, I want something to enjoy and to remember.
So, I guess, McDonald’s are welcome to their silly patent just so long as they don’t try to inflict their lack of taste outside their golden arches.
god this is stupid. but if thats the way they (all these stupid companies) want to play, ok. I’m going to patent the ‘method and apparatus’ of the drive thru. I’m also going to patent the ‘method and apparatus’ for monatary exchange between producer and consumer. & finally I’m going to patent the letter “M”
I want Tillions for each patent McDonalds cause you have been infringing for years off my ideas
& no I won’t accept free burgers in exhange for these patents
I look forward to the new Congress holding hearings on whole patent process.
Has anybody thought of patenting the wheel?
Why doesn’t McDonald’s patent their deliberately minimalist bathrooms (no paper towels; soap often lacking; locked, one-foot-from-the-floor TP dispensers of one-ply; etc.)?
That employee’s hands are dark not only because he’s an illegal alien.
The U.S. Patent Office should be closed and overhauled.
#8 – Has anybody thought of patenting the wheel?
Yes.
They can patent all they want to; if I’m going to all the trouble to don pantaloons and tunic to go out to eat then I’m gonna eat something besides a damn sandwich. Sandwiches are like sex, better if consumed at home, in private. That way nobody says anything about the sardines, mayo, cheese and or the peanut butter.
You can’t put a patent on all sandwiches!!! Its such a general thing, this is so ridiculous, Maybe a specific type of sandwich OK but you cant claim a patent on all sandwichs, just like you cant put a patent on all written words, the air, trees, chairs, pavement, Siamese twins, I mean, we should really start going after the people who are involved in patenting things, and get them to quash these idiotic patent ideas before they get off the ground.
Boing Boing sez that the patent is for a device that aids in the making of sandwiches, NOT for sandwiches themselves.
MacDo is invading UK territory with this one and slapping the Brits in the face with an affront on their history. Supporters of the Earl of Sandwich will be boycotting the stores nationwide if this goes through. It will be an Industrial Food revolution like you have never seen before.
Isn’t anyone thinking of Nicole Richie? Won’t someone please think of Nicole Richie!
#12 — I guess I could have mentioned this during recent posts about thought-controlled computers — but, Toshiba has been granted a patent for the concept.
Damn if the wheel has been patented. Then Ok, what about breathing, I will patent the “method and apparatus” of breathing. That should give me a nice competitive advantage. While I am at it I should also patent the “method and apparatus” of blood pumping, peeing … Why not they hold the patent to half my genes.
Q: What do you call 100 patent lawyers up their necks in sand?
A: Not enough sand.
Q: What do you call 100 patent lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.
Q: Why are all the patent lawyers in L.A> and all the gays in San Francisco?
A: Frisco had first choice.
Q: How do you get a patent lawyer out of a tree?
A: Cut the rope.
Do McD’s even SELL sandwiches? They don’t here in Ireland, and that article is from the U.K. – I’ m pretty sure they don’t do sandwiches there.
Except maybe a couple of chicken burgers that are called “sandwiches” for some reason.
Does anyone know about what happened with ugg boots? I am an aussie and it caused a ruccus over here a couple of years ago.
You see the name ‘ugg boot’ is a generic term to describe the sheepskin boots that have been around for years. Apparently someone took out a patent on the name in the 1970’s but no-one took much notice because it was such a generic term.
Anyhow, a couple of years ago one of the large American firms bought the patent for the term ‘ugg boot’ and all it’s variants. This company then started the whole cease and desist threat term to all the Australian manufacturers who called their product ugg boots. They were told they had to call their product by some other name. I
t went on for a while and was a real bone of contention for a couple of years – going to court etc. There have even been documentaries made about the whole thing.
Just beware – If McDonalds gets to own sandwich – we may have to start getting used to eating McSandiches!
Everyone is blaming the lawyers when it is obviously those who are hiring them that are the problem.
Reminds me of an item I read years ago where a fellow received a patent for handles on a wheelbarrow and managed, for a time anyway, to patent the entire wheelbarrow.
RBG
“help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants”
They already do. McDonald’s sandwiches always taste like cardboard .
Ahhh…I thought you cannot patent a business process…
Isn’t the method of making a sandwich a business process…?
This is pretty dumb…
#21 – Alex – If you wanna waste your time and actually read the article, just so you can be “informed” and “educated” then you go right ahead.
The rest of us are just fine to wallow in biased conjecture and unfounded accusation.
All the damn lawyers need to die!
Have the patent lawyers gone mad!
To quote an early poster…I too look forward to a new congress…but it’s just more of the same shit, different party, not a bloody thing will change until a third party comes to minority power…which I fear is another 6 years off, by then we’ll be off the deep end and learning Mandarin.
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
— Steven Wright
There is loads of information out there exposing the ingredients in McDonald’s to be toxic and very bad for your health. Fatuous nonsense. And typical of the way the word “toxic” is misused by the ignorant and the scaremongering. McDonalds food is not unhealthy – consuming calories and fat to excess, regardless of what fast food restaurant prepared it, is unhealthy. And McDonalds’ food is not toxic, by any rational English-speaker’s definition of the word “toxic”.