It never fails - EVERY TIME I think that corporate lawyers can't dream up anything more absurd than they already have, they prove, unequivocally, that I lack the gift of diabolical imagination.
McDonald's wants to own the rights to how a sandwich is made. The fast-food chain has applied for a patent relating to the 'method and apparatus' used to prepare the snack.
The burger company says owning the 'intellectual property rights' would help its hot deli sandwiches look and taste the same at all of its restaurants.
Harmless, right? WRONG.
These people are CORPORATE CONTROL FREAKS.
They won't stop until EVERYTHING is under their control.
It also wants to cut down on the time needed to put together a sandwich, thought to have been dreamt up by the Earl of Sandwich in 1762.
They want us to pay royalties to them because some ham in the 18th century was too lazy to make a hot meal???
The 55-page patent, which has been filed in the US and Europe, covers the 'simultaneous toasting of a bread component'.
Garnishes of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, as well as salt, pepper and ketchup, are inserted into a cavity in a 'sandwich delivery tool'.
The 'bread component' is placed over the cavity and the assembly tool is inverted to tip out the contents. Finally, the filling is placed in the 'bread component'.
It explains: 'Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich.'
Lawrence Smith-Higgins, of the UK Patent Office, said: 'McDonald's or anyone else cannot get retrospective exclusive rights to making a sandwich.
Tell us something we don't already know.
How on earth would they enforce such a ridiculous patent anyway?
Station police at peoples' homes to watch for cheaters trying to make one in the middle of the night without paying royalties???
'They might have a novel device, but it could be quite easy for someone to make a sandwich in a similar way without infringing their claims.'
McDonald's said: 'These applications are not intended to prevent anyone from using previous methods for making sandwiches.'
Good grief. Reminds me of the joker who wanted to patent gravity.
Kudos to Jason for digging it.
Submitted by qrswave on Thu, 2006-11-30 00:54
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you're pretty good at bullshitting yourself!
welcome, your honor!
I'm not licensed just yet but I'd be happy to argue the case on behalf of sandwich makers (and eaters) across America.
but, patents and copyrights are perhaps two of the most evil legal instruments on earth - even worse than MONEY.
In fact, MONEY is only evil when it is used fraudulently, or when it is commodified and interest is charged on it.
Otherwise, money can be an instrument of profound good because of the trade and cooperation it facilitates.
Patents and copyrights, on the other hand, are inherently evil - requiring as they do all of humanity to pay tribute to those who "created" the "intellectual property" they attach to - PURE EVIL.
I don't think wither Patent or Copyright is evil. The Founders of this country felt that granting a monopoly for A LIMITED TIME in intellectual property would encourage the development of the same.
The limited monopoly creates a market. There would be no such market without it, save perhaps for live performance. And even live performances could then be copied and rebroadcast with no rights of remuneration to the creators.
Like all capitalism in this country, it is the lack of controls that leads to inequity.
It is of course not about the urgent need of protecting McDonald's unique "technology of burger flipping"! The ambition goes far beyond that: The ultimate goal is to accumulate so much economic and "legal" power that every consumer will be confronted with the fact that if he wants to eat he will have to pay royalties to Monsanto.
We have come further down that road than most people realize. We have court cases which ruled that organic farmers whose fields were polluted with Monsanto GM crops have been found to be in violation of the patent rights of Monsanto and thus had to pay compensation!
The principle of "the polluter pays" has been turned on its head and has become "the polluter must be compensated"!
Filing for patent protection of the pig (We remember that it was one of God's creations disseminated free of any and all licence fees, a kind of "freeware" to speak in current terms) is just a step in the direction of complete control of the world population. You can survive only for weeks without food.
All farming becomes more and more dependent on commercial input, the bio diversity is under threat, and the consequence is that in most countries it is not even possible any longer for farmers to retreat into subsistence farming to weather periods of economic crisis.
If we mean anything with our development assistance our first priority should be to enable poor people to survive in poverty. Now we are rather contributing to push the poor into misery and death. Is that really what we want? Is that why we promote bio fuels for the rich SUV owners of this world to compete for the same calories on which the survival of our fellow men and women's survival depend?
"The Founders of this country felt that granting a monopoly for A LIMITED TIME in intellectual property would encourage the development of the same."
The founders of this country had NO IDEA what they were unleashing on their nation when they drafted that clause.
And to assume otherwise is to assign to them an omniscience that did not exist.
Besides, with a little imagination, numerous other ways can be devised to fairly compensate artists and inventors for their WORK without taxing every single person on earth for the privilege of using each and every copy of it.
Industrialization and mass production has created economies of scale that turn what was originally meant to be fair compensation into one that is OBSCENE.
Artists - like anyone else on earth should be compensated for their LABOR - not their so-called "rights" in the knowledge they discovered.
To do otherwise is to assign to them a superhuman status that they do not deserve.
Moreover, in order to "protect" their so-called "right" to have everyone on earth pay them tribute - draconian laws must be enacted and enforced on an increasingly impoverished populace.
It's gotten so bad that the average person pays a good portion of their income in royalties alone to the various copyright and patentholders who have interests in the products they use.
This is in addition to the fees or "interest" we pay to bankers for the privilege of using our OWN money.
If we are going "around and around" on this subject it is because you do not or cannot imagine a world in which all knowledge flows freely and in which compensation is achieved not by monopolization and coercion, but by cooperation.
The price of products should not be whatever the market will bear - but, what the inventor or artist asks for in return for his LABOR from the outset.
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"Money" has no value - people do.