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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.
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
And you'd really get into trouble if you tried to make PB&J's with $2 bills...
Digital Sailor
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.
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.
(Now watch as someone proves me wrong.)
Yeah, they can be a PITA like that.
KFG
And FYI, we should be getting about 500-2400mg of sodium a day, but the average American consumes something like 3000-6000mg per day, because we eat so much prepackaged food.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana