Court Denies Smucker's PB&J Patent

lbmouse writes "The AP is reporting that on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected an effort by the Jelly & Jam maker to patent its process for making pocket peanut butter and jelly sandwiches." While the company was only trying to patent the "crimping process" used to create a specific type of mass market sandwich, they had also "...asked Albie's Foods of Gaylord, Mich., to stop producing ready-made PB&J sandwiches for a school district".

Comments

God damn geek anti-patent rants

[QuantumG]

This pisses me off. All you geeks are ranting about how you basically shouldn't be able to patent anything. It doesn't matter what the product is that you're making, you should be able to patent a novel process. If I figure out a way to synthesize a new drug I should be able to patent that process. If I figure out a way to put together a toaster faster than my competitor then I should be able to patent that process. No-one is trying to patent peanut butter (paste) and jelly (jam) sandwiches, Smuckers is trying to defend their patent on a particular process they use to make a product that just happens to include these ingredients. You're free to clone their product and compete with them, you just have to come up with your own process to do it. Without this protection any innovation Smuckers puts into improving their process can be just copied by competitors. That means Smuckers cant put any significant amount of investment into refining their process or they'll be undercut by competitors that copy it without cost. That's the justification for patents and without it we wouldn't have all the innovative technology we use every day. Unlike copyright, patents are not about incentives, they're about outright survival in a competitive market place.

Re:As a lazy-ass

[Mancat]

They now also make crustless bread for lazy asses like him. Of course, the bread is being marketed to CHILDREN. Original poster, please grow up!