Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Will your lunch violate intellectual property laws?

In Patent Application No. WO/2006/068863 (h/t The Browser), McDonald’s claims:

A method of making a sandwich composed of at least a bread component and sandwich garnish comprising: placing sandwich garnish material on a sandwich assembly tool, the sandwich assembly tool comprising a region for holding sandwich garnish material to be applied to a bread component of a sandwich, the member comprising at least one cavity; placing the bread component over and adjacent the cavity; and thereafter inverting the sandwich assembly tool and the bread component while the bread is adjacent and covering the cavity to cause the sandwich garnish to be deposited from the cavity to the bread component.

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6 Comments

  • Translation:
    McDonald’s does not trust our employees with knives.

    • By Fred

  • This is a patent application, not a patent, BUT….

    One has to wonder about the wisdom of filing such an application in the first place. It is not only obvious, but it was done before.

    It does however have entertainment value and therefore advertising value to McDonalds. Keeping the company name in the spotlight, even in a stupid context, may influence a percentage of readers to have a Big Mac for lunch.

    • By VMS

  • Do McDonalds’ workers know that the company refers to them as “sandwich assembly tools”?

    • By Tom T.

  • Don’t forget to patent that “Lettuce Alignment Tool”, pal…

    • By mojo

  • So McDonald’s wants to patent “hands”. Can I have the patent on “feet” or maybe “eyes”, that sounds very profitable.

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