You'll never eat lunch in this town again (without paying a royalty)
Slashdot brought this to my attention: McDonald's patent application for sandwich making.
Sigh.
There are reasons for thinking this won't go through. Thank goodness. But it's yet another demonstration of just how defective the entire intellectual property regime has gotten. It's a patent for making sandwiches. There's a sandwich-making flowchart, for fuck's sake!
Madness, I tell you.
Not even lunch is sacred anymore.
Sigh.
There are reasons for thinking this won't go through. Thank goodness. But it's yet another demonstration of just how defective the entire intellectual property regime has gotten. It's a patent for making sandwiches. There's a sandwich-making flowchart, for fuck's sake!
Madness, I tell you.
Not even lunch is sacred anymore.
Comments
(For those unfamiliar with Quincy's, think Western Sizzlin or Ryan's with a different sign. All these places are the same, except for the sign. You go in, and there's a winding line to get a tray you may not actually ever use, and a glass of soda that you serve yourself, and possibly plates that will be taken away and filled for you if you actually get a steak instead of helping yourself to the salad bar or the hot buffet, with its fried chicken and green beans by the metric ton.)
If it were generated for employees, that would be sad but maybe not unexpected.
Instead, it was generated so they can sue you if you open a restaurant that sells sandwiches that you make in a fashion similar to the patented McDonald's Sandwich Process.
I myself have just filled a patent application, complete with flowchart graphics, of a proprietary process for ass wiping.
I'm telling you, anybody else attempted to wipe their ass using my technique is going to pay...
What?
Jim, I thought that was about appropriate.
Jim, if you use 2-ply toilet paper to wipe your ass, I'd advise against trying to get a patent for that. Because I've held that patent for over twenty years and I will sic my lawyers on you if it's discovered that you're infringing on my ass-wiping patent.
1-ply, however? Knock yourself out.
And doesn't Subway have a patented loaf-cutting pattern? Where it's in a v-shape so stuff doesn't fall out of the sandwich? I vaguely recall hearing something about that the first time I went to a Blimpie's.
As for your 1-ply comment, well, using up more paper means more packages bought, which is better for the stockholders. Not that I know any stockholders...
*whistles innocently*
Hmmm... wonder if that's been patented?
the patent, as they did for patent # 6,004,596, the one Smuckers made for crustless PB&J sandwiches.h