Two years later, McDonald's sandwich patent can't hold back Domino's
For centuries people have enjoyed sandwiches, and many businesses have made them without the "critical" protection of patents to ensure a short-term monopoly.
Indeed, here in the United States, Domino's Pizza is making a furious push to up-end Subway's sandwich dominance.
!%!%!%!% pirates!
Have they forgotten that McDonald's filed for a patent on sandwich-making two years ago? The U.K.'s Guardian covered this momentous patent two years ago, but it apparently hasn't struck fear into these would-be sandwich maestros.
Of course, McDonald's was not simply trying to patent the sandwich. It was trying to put a lock on automating sandwich-making, so that 16-year-olds everywhere would find themselves unemployed, and so that its plastic-tasting burgers would have even less variation in plasticity:
The present invention relates to a sandwich assembly tool and methods of making a sandwich, which may be a hot or cold sandwich, quickly by pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich....Methods of making a sandwich are disclosed. The methods may include one or more of the use of preassembled sandwich fillings, assembly of garnishes in advance of a customer's order or while ether portions of the sandwich are being heated using the sandwich assembly tool, the simultaneous heating of a bread component and the sandwich filling, placing the bread component over the tool containing garnish, and inverting the tool and bread combination to deposit the sandwich garnish onto the bread component.
Genius! And yet those pesky competitors keep making them by hand, foiling the McDonald's plans for world sandwich domination. Drat those upstart pirates!
At least software isn't the only industry that comes up with goofball patents.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
You can send my profits to Ura Pigg, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Any state will do, zip code doesn't matter. If you do not send my profits to me as discussed, you can speak to my team of lawyers - Dewey, Cheetum and Howe.
;-)
As a side note, Subway would love it if McD's started doing this. Can you imagine the 'we're not robots' ad campaign?
I know you have a beef with Software Patents but please don't cloud your judgements by painting all patents as bad. Just because you make a living off using free and open software doesn't mean that's the only way of making a living.
And that's a perfectly valid patent.
I thought patents encompassed something new, an innovation, the results of creative thinking. Instead, as this patent demonstrates, the only new thinking seems to come from patent lawyers who work with clients to blanket the known world with drivel posing as patent applications.
Matt -- keep up the good work.
I jest. Anyway, interesting article and although it's not completely relevant this isn't a college class. It's his opinion column. Quit crying about it. And on the note of "piracy..." good use of the term!
Piracy is not theft. Theft removes the original. Piracy makes a copy.
Piracy is not theft. Piracy is Piracy. :P
- by adam_hartung December 31, 2008 9:30 AM PST
- Domino's is very smart to go after a new market with new products in this tough economy. Why keep up the old price wars in pizza where Domino's cannot change customer perceptions? Instead going after a new market will give Domino's growth opportunities. Great move to grow when most competitors are trying to save costs. Read more at http://www.ThePhoenixPrinciple.com
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