The fast food giant was sued by the federal government for not allowing McDonald’s franchise owners to use third-party hacking devices to repair chronically broken ice cream machines. They want to legalize it.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division are asking the U.S. Copyright Office to approve an exemption from copyright law that would allow business owners to repair “commercial and industrial equipment.”
Federal authorities will not allow business owners to hire third-party repair personnel, according to comments submitted Thursday during deliberations seeking an exemption from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). He said this would limit competition and increase the cost of repairs.
If a soft service machine breaks down, management loses $625 in sales per day. Inferred agency at the time of filing with the Copyright Office.
Business owners are not legally allowed to repair the machine themselves or hire third-party technicians, so they must wait for a certified technician, which typically takes about 90 days. the comment states.
According to the filing, the agencies want exemptions to apply to commercial soft-serve machines, proprietary diagnostic kits, programmable logic controllers and enterprise IT. The Verve first reported.
“In the Agency’s view, updating and expanding repair-related exemptions will not only promote competition in the market for replacement parts, repairs, and maintenance services, but also in the market for repairable products.” is written on the application form.
Last year, popular e-commerce site iFixit asked Congress for a copyright exemption that would allow its technicians to repair machines.
DMCA Section 1201 exemptions are issued every three years as recommended by the Copyright Registry.
In 2021, the FTC began investigating complaints from McDonald’s franchise owners. McDonald’s franchise owners claimed they were losing business because McFlurry machines kept breaking down.
The problem was further exacerbated by customer complaints. One McDonald’s fan has created a website to track broken machines in real time.
According to the website McBroken, up to 10% of McDonald’s stores nationwide have consistently broken ice cream machines.
In 2022, a couple was awarded $900 million after McDonald’s denied franchise owners access to high-tech equipment that would allow them to quickly repair an $18,000 ice cream machine manufactured exclusively by Taylor. I sued McDonald’s for this.
Jeremy O’Sullivan and his partner Melissa Nelson have developed a device called Kytch, which is about the size of a mobile phone and is embedded inside a machine.
The device intercepts the machine’s internal communications and sends them over WiFi to a smartphone or web interface, where the owner can troubleshoot the problem.
As word of Kytch’s effectiveness began to spread, franchise owners began adopting the technology.
But when the parent company learned of it, it warned that the hacking device violated the ice cream machine’s warranty and also posed a risk of “serious personal injury.”
In November 2020, McDonald’s told its franchisees not to use Kytch devices, halting the startup’s booming sales.
Kitch sued Taylor in 2021 after Taylor allegedly obtained one of Kitch’s devices and reverse engineered it to create his own internet connection monitoring product.
The newspaper reached out to MacDonald, Taylor and Kitch for comment.
