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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".
There's only one way to celebrate...You know it..
IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
For those that don't RTFA, Smucker actually allready had a patent from 1995, but this rejection "involved two additional patents that Smucker was seeking to expand its original patent by protecting its method." I.e. they still have the original patent for their method of making a P&J sandwich, but "the company's original patent is being re-examined by the patent office."
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
There goes my chances of patenting the BLT.
There goes my patent on grilled cheese.
Food crumbs in the keyboard.
In a post 9/11 world, police arrest peanut butter and jelly.
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 once saw a show on the television that said the US army already crimps PB&J sandwiches as a type of combat ration... they last for a while, apparently!
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
I have to ask, what in the bloody hell is a "pocket" peanut butter and jam sandiwch?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
And you'd really get into trouble if you tried to make PB&J's with $2 bills...
Digital Sailor
Once again the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has struck a blow for our rights online. We can email each other peanut butter and jelly sanwiches without fear of lawsuits.
What's for lunch?
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.
...it has to be fraud.
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.
Smuckers has a picture of them here.
Apparently they are found in the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store as the the page says, "All you do is thaw and serve."
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
Is the U.S. Patent system really that backwards?
Yes.
wdd
somebody will patent blow jobs, then my wife will have alegal excuse.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
One of a kind way to make PB&J sandwiches. I hate to tell these asshats, I was making PB and Strawberry sandwiches for ages. When I was younger I used to cut the edge of the bread off, but today I need the extra fiber.
Maybe I should patent that I whipe my ass with the paper going upwards and not downwards. Who knows, maybe I am the only one who knows how to whipe an ass.
Patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office disagreed, saying the crimped edges are similar to making ravioli or a pie crust.
Fuck, here comes Chef Boy-R-D and his patent lawyers. Someone tell that 90 year old woman she is no longer lawfully allowed to make her family dinner.
Smucker asked Albie's Foods of Gaylord, Mich., to stop producing ready-made PB&J sandwiches for a school district, but the food manufacturer went to a federal judge in 2001 and then the patent office to invalidate Smucker's original patent. Albie's was "caught off guard, literally, because they didn't think you could patent a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," said the company's lawyer, Kevin Heinl.
Can my girlfriend patent the blow job? She is damn good. She swirls her tounge, head down, but the eyes looking up like a puppy dog. Like "oh dear daddy, I love you". Just like that. Nobody else does it like her. I'd like to get a nickle everytime your girlfriend gives you a blow job.
The patent office received 376,810 patent applications last year. It usually takes about two-and-a-half years for a patent to be processed. About 65 percent of all patents submitted are approved, Quinn said.
There were over 200,000 patents approved last year? Sweet Jesus. I really should get around to a but whipe patent.
"Very few patents are what one would call a 'pioneer patent,' meaning that the inventor discovered something very, very new that has never been discovered before," she said. "Most patents are given to changes to existing technology."
I'll dip the toilet paper in water. That's it.
"We bought a unique idea for making an everyday item more convenient (and) made a significant investment in the idea and in developing the innovative manufacturing technology that makes Uncrustables so easy to use," the company said.
I wonder how this ruling will effect the Pop Tart corporation?
Smucker's stock price fell 30 cents on Friday to close at $49.67 on the New York Stock Exchange.
I can hear Gordon Gekko yelling "Bud FOX, Damn you!". I wish we knew how this PB&J thing really played out.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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?
Yes, you're right.
One major point on the patent was that, when making a PBJ, the J seeps through the bread. To solve that problem, Smuckers put PB on BOTH pieces of bread.
And patented that!
They got a patent on putting PB on both bread slices instead of just one!
And we wonder how the one-click-order got patented!
A method of making a crustless sandwich from two slices of bread with outer crusts, the method comprising: placing a first slice of bread on a platen; forming a mass of a first food spread onto the central portion of the first slice of bread in a position spaced inwardly from a marginal area where the mass is formed with an inner lower layer with an outer rim extending upwardly from the lower layer to define a closed pocket or receptacle recess in the mass; placing a second food spread in the receptacle recess; closing the receptacle recess with a layer of the first food spread generally coextensive with the mass and supported on the outer rim of the mass to encapsulate the second food spread into a center composite food layer; placing a second slice of bread over the first slice to cover the center composite food layer; cutting the bread slices in unison in a cut pattern to remove the crusts of the slices; and, pressing the two bread slices together by force through the slices against a pressure surface on the platen to crimp the slices into a crustless sandwich.
The US Court of Appeals invalidated the patent. The stupid motherfuckers at the patent office actually granted the thing.
It's starting to look like patents are drifting well past their original purpose. Overhaul the system, or ditch the suckers completely.
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.
How lazy are we as a society, when we can't even spend 1 minute to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Thats what scares me more then this Smuckers patent.
I'm opposed to this.
I would like to be free to whack the USPTO upside the head, without IP encumbrance.
People aways did noted inventors like James Watt, Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell, they all had very large patent portfolios. Infact Henry Ford was unable to produce his model T, because it was blocked by a patent, the owner would only grant use to his "Club", and didn't like the masses having access to cars. So Ford waited it out. Bell is also interesting because in is thought by many that his application was modified and used information stolen from another application, being checked by the same examiner. Many believe the examiner was paid by Bell.
James
People have been making PB&J sandwiches on toasted AND crimped bread for a long time...
There is a device called a jaffle iron designed to be held over a fire or stove, it creates 'flying saucers' of toasted bread with whatever filling you want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffle_iron
"what do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have to do with my rights online?"
Who gives a flying fuck?
"Derp de derp."
I think what offends the "geeks" you're arguing with is that patentability implies that an idea has some novelty and is not obvious to anyone "skilled in the art" to which it pertains. Yet, patents are often granted that violate these principles, sometimes to an absurd extent.
patents are not about incentives, they're about outright survival in a competitive market place.
The purpose it to promote innovation, not to grant monopolies simply for the asking. The government does not owe you success. Success in a competitive marketplace comes from competing successfully.
Somebody pass me a foie gras and salmon roe pocket sandwich, I'm hungry. Today's theme ingredient is Intellectual Property!
... and then they built the supercollider.
That's actually a good idea.
Except, peanut products cause me to um... die. Now if they could just keep that from happening, that would be awesome!
It seems like a really stupid patent, until you try those sandwiches. They are GOOD. For someone who doesn't like to spend a lot of time cooking (or in the case of the PBJ, getting the components together), and also as a guy who never got over the whole crusts thing (hate them, cut them off, always), this thing is a godsend. Laugh all you like, but try one first.
Earth to lazy-ass, come in lazy-ass.
These things taste like ass, lazy, pre-processed ass
It takes about 90 seconds to put together a real PBJ sandwich and put the remaining components back into storage and lick the knife. To avoid eating crust (what are you 2 years old?) you tear the crust off one side and start eating there until you've eaten out everything but the remaining crust, which you then throw away!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
When peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are outlawed, only outlaws will have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Coding Blog
Unless Smuckers came up with a really unique way of 'crimping the edges' to seal the sandwich, then I'd have to argue against it on the basis of prior art going back to a tool that I first saw back when I was a Boy Scout; it was two metal rods hinged together at one end with handles at the other, sort of like a nutcracker, but the arms were about two feet long. Near the hinge on each rod was a circular dished metal plate. You buttered two slices of bread, put one on one of the plates, added some filling (jam, meat, PB&J, etc), put the other slice on top, and closed the arms; this clamped the two plates together, cutting off the crust and sealing the 'sandwich' inside; you then stuck it into a fire to brown the bread, giving you a sort of pasty or fruit pie (depending on the filling. And this was back in the late '60s, so 'prior art' has been around for a while.
... the problem is ENFORCEMENT.
We don't need to do anything about patent law. What we need desperately is to do something about proper enforcement of the existing rules.
Patent law forbids granting patents on inventions for which there is prior art. Yet there is a flood of patents for which there is prior art which is against existing patent law.
Patent law forbids granting patents on inventions which are obvious deductions from prior art. Yet there is a flood of patents which do not meet the criteria of non-obviousness, again against existing patent law.
Patent law also forbids granting patents on applications which are not described in enough detail to allow persons skilled in the art to carry out the invention (ie build the apparatus). Yet there is a flood of fuzzy patents which were not specified in the required detail, yet again against existing patent law.
The one primeval problem there is with the patent system today is that enforcement of existing legislation is anywhere from too lax to non-existant. That is the issue we ought to acknowledge and do something about.
The fact that we, the public, do not acknowledge this to be the root cause, that we usually talk nonsense when it comes to patent issues, that we consequently do not lobby for better enforcement, this only works into the hands of those who abuse the system, who take advantage of the lack of enforcement of patent law.
the macintosh asterisk mailing list http://www.astm
That's right.
Why?
Why? Are you so special that if someone else works out how to synthesize that drug independently of you, that you should be able to stop them from taking advantage of their own research?
If their "process" is so braindead that a chimpanzee can imitate the process after viewing it once, why in the hell should they be granted a patent on it?
Too bad the so-called justification is without merit
B.S. We'd have innovation coming out of our eyeballs if big companies weren't using "intellectual property" laws to squash their competition.
If a company can't survive in a marketplace without being granted a government-enforced monopoly, then THEY DON'T DESERVE TO SURVIVE. Propping up failing companies is called corporate welfare, and prevents more economically-beneficial entities from taking their place.
close - if peanut butter and jellly sandwiches die (become patent encumbered), then it's time to get the fuck out of the mine (USA).
So that's the trick: Make sure any prior art has already been eaten.
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.
Actually, I've been making P&J sandwitches for ages, only I mostly replaced the P with butter. And sometimes I replaced the J with P, or even other stuff.
When I took those sandwiches to work that butter made sure that the J (or other stuff) stayed in the middle untill my noon break, when I ate them.
Would those sandwiches be considered "prior art", or would they, as they are "so similar", be falling under the P&J -patent too ?
I think that preserves are like jam, but even chunkier.
Preserves might not include pectin, but don't quote me on that.
OK, here are some "official" definitions:
- jam: A preserve made from whole fruit boiled to a pulp with sugar.
- jelly: A soft, semisolid food substance with a resilient consistency, made by the setting of a liquid containing pectin or gelatin or by the addition of gelatin to a liquid, especially such a substance made of fruit juice containing pectin boiled with sugar.
- marmalade: A clear, jellylike preserve made from the pulp and rind of fruits, especially citrus fruits.
- preserves: Fruit cooked with sugar to protect against decay or fermentation.
So my earlier definition was slightly off, in that jam is apparently cooked with sugar (although I've bought stuff labeled "jam" that had no sugar in it at all).Here are the relationships between the various substances, as I understand them:Or, in Python:I hope that this helps distinguish between the various types of delicious fruit-derived toppings for sandwiches, English muffins, etc.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
when making a PBJ, the J seeps through the bread. To solve that problem, Smuckers put PB on BOTH pieces of bread.
:)
:)
Gee, when I was a kid, my mom taught me to put regular butter on the jam side for exactly that reason. If only we'd known it was such an "innovative" idea, I'd be the son of a millionaire right now!
Or maybe it's the use of peanut butter instead of regular butter that makes it quite so new and innovative and inobvious? Yeah, substituting peanut butter for butter on a PBJ - nobody would *ever* think of that!
Anyway, I just had myself a patent-violating sandwich to, er, celebrate.
That sounds like a mechanical/manual version of one of these. You've been able to buy things like that here in the UK for at least 20 years. Same idea - switch that on and it heats up, make a sandwhich, put it in, close the toaster and it cuts and crimps it while it cooks it. I recommend buttering the *outside* of the bread, it makes it brown nicely.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I only started making PB&J sandwiches recently because my mom never made them when I was a kid. I put PB on both slices because it didn't occur to me to only put it on 1 slice. (I mean, something should go on the other slice, right?) Well, no cease-and-desist letters for me!
Let me go make my own..Ok..I'll start with 2 slices of healthy wheat bread. Add a serving of peanut butter and top it off with that special 0 mg jelly you found.
Bread - 128mg sodium per slice = 256 mg
2 Tbsp of peanut butter =150 mg
Total for my homemade version = 406 mg sodium
Whew, thank god a dodged that corporate bullet and made my own at home.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime