You May Be Able to Get Your McFlurries Again

The USPTO has ruled that McDonald’s restaurants will be allowed to fix their ice cream machines.

Previously, the manufacturer of the notoriously unreliable machines have been using the DMCA to prevent store owners from diagnosing or repairing their machines.

McDonald’s often maligned, seemingly perennially-broken ice cream machines could soon become a thing of the past.

On Oct. 25, the United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption that gives restaurants like McDonald's the “right to repair” broken machines by circumventing digital locks that prevent them from being fixed by anyone other than its manufacturer.

The Golden Arches’ vanilla cones, sundaes and McFlurries are all made in machines from Taylor Company, as they have been for nearly 70 years. Back in 1956, future McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc made a handshake agreement with Taylor to supply milkshake machines as McDonald’s exclusive supplier.

The Taylor company holds a copyright on its machines, and in the past that has meant that if one broke, only its repair people were legally allowed to fix it, according to a 2021 Wired article. This is due to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that criminalizes making or using technology, devices or services that circumvent the control access of copyrighted works.  

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The exemption granted by the United States Copyright Office went into effect on Oct. 28 and was jointly petitioned for by repair-focused website iFixIt and advocacy group Public Knowledge. In 2023, iFixit documented its teardown of McDonald’s machines and said it spat out multiple “nonsensical, counterintuitive, and seemingly random” error codes, but it couldn’t do anything to repair it.

Although the full request wasn’t granted, retail-level commercial food preparation equipment received an exemption that will allow third parties to bypass digital locks on machines for repairs.

Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, said that the Copyright Office’s decision will lead to an “overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry.”

The DMCA is a horrible law, it serves primarily to reinforce the corrupt and monopolistic practices of bad actors in our economy, whether it be Taylor, or HP preventing the use of 3rd party toner in HP products, or John Deere's horrible repair policies.

Repeal it.