Slashdot Mirror
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".
I am ready to join the protesters who want to destroy corporate america. The ones who go to G7 meetings and economic forums and fight the nasty police. If some asshole wants to deprive me of the right to a PB&J sandwich because they have a patent, motherfuck them. The corporations have too much power. Too many lobbyists. And the laws are getting rediculous.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I don't see what the big interest with this case is. I think the only reason it is getting as much publicity as it is, is because the general public actually understands the patent. The prior art is clear: ravioli, pierogies, pirags, etc.
There are software patents being passed that are 100 times more ridiculous than this, yet you don't hear much about it outside of Slashdot or some short blurb in the tech section of the NYT.
Most of these software patents are just as absurd as patenting a method of making a PB&J sandwich, often worse. A "System and method for creating, processing and managing educational content within and between schools," I mean come on, or a "method and system for processing input from a command line interface."
I wish the general public would realize the ramifications of software patents like these. It is essentially re-patenting the wheel.
With a name like Smucker's, it has to be, uh, patent pending.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The same thing that canaries have to do with coal mines.
This is the real news here -- that the patent office rejected a patent application.
My question is this: if they accepted swinging on a swing as worthy of a US patent, why did the USPTO decide to deny Smuckers this one?
Patent comes in for a new type of PB&J.
Worker: Hey! I could have thought of that... hell, the wife makes one every Tuesday... DENIED.
Patent comes in for a new "technology." A Web site will have a box labeled Username and one labeled Password, and a Submit button that logs on the user to the Web sites system.
Worker: That sounds complex about computer web site things. Must be some new technology. APPROVED.
If there is anything unique about the machines they designed, they should get a patent on that. But they didn't. They got a patent on the sandwich.
The idea of "leaking" the secret about a crimped PBJ with PB on both slices of bread is absurd. It's not innovative, it's obvious, and it took just about zero investment of time and capital to come up with. Here are the exact claims from the patent:
There are two parts to this patent: (1) So the jelly soaks through the non peanut-buttered side. 90% of the population could solve that dillemma in 30 seconds by putting PB on both sides. (2) So the sandwich is loose. Crimp it just like ravioli has been crimped for over a century.
Notice that there is not a single reference to any machine that could make this sandwich. Just two dead-simple ideas that even a person of low intelligence would think of as soon as they saw the problem description.
This is not some mysterious rocket-science research that needs to be nurtured. It's just a sandwich that you could make in your kitchen in 60 seconds, except that now it's illegal.
As a European, I'm amazed that this kind of candy bread is actually spread, pre-manufactured, at schools!
It's not like we don't know the PB&J over here in Holland but come on, a school should primarily serve a nice fresh cheese sandwich or something else without so much sugar.