Sealed crustless sandwich
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A sealed crustless sandwich is a type of peanut butter and jelly sandwich for which the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) awarded Menusaver, Inc. a patent (U.S. Patent 6,004,596) on December 21, 1999 for its invention. Menusaver, owned by The J.M. Smucker Co., began sending letters to other peanut butter and jelly sandwich manufacturers and urged them to cease patent infringement.
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[edit] Patent
The first claim of Menusaver's patent reads:
- A sealed crustless sandwich, comprising:
- a first bread layer having a first perimeter surface coplanar to a contact surface;
- at least one filling of an edible food juxtaposed to said contact surface;
- a second bread layer juxtaposed to said at least one filling opposite of said first bread layer, wherein said second bread layer includes a second perimeter surface similar to said first perimeter surface;
- a crimped edge directly between said first perimeter surface and said second perimeter surface for sealing said at least one filling between said first bread layer and said second bread layer;
- wherein a crust portion of said first bread layer and said second bread layer has been removed.
That is, the patent described a sandwich with a layer of filling in between two pieces of bread which are crimped shut and have their crust removed. The other nine claims of the patent elaborate the idea further, including the coating of two sides of the bread with peanut butter first before putting the jelly in the middle, so that the jelly would not seep into the bread—the layers of filling "are engaged to one another to form a reservoir for retaining the second filling in between".
Many intellectual property experts invoke this application as an example of a dangerous and frivolous patent. The patent examiner, Lien Tran, consulted on a minimal amount of prior art: seven previous patents issued between 1963 and 1998, and a 1994 book called 50 Great Sandwiches, concluding that the model was original. However a 1949 patent (U.S. Patent 2,463,439) was issued for a device to create these types of sandwiches: "An object of this invention is to provide... a means for locating said filling in the center of the sandwich and sealing the marginal edges of the pieces by heat and pressure to preclude the escape of filling from the finished product... [and] a means for trimming the baked dough pieces".
Smucker's also attempted to patent the process of making the sandwich in 2004 (rather than just the sandwich itself) and on April 8, 2005 had its application rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).[1].
[edit] Patent Enforcement
In 2001, a small grocery and caterer in Gaylord, Michigan, Albie's Food, Inc., was sent a cease and desist letter from Smucker's, accusing Albie's of violating their intellectual property rights to the "sealed crustless sandwich". Instead of capitulating, Albie's took the case to federal court, noting in their filings a pocket sandwich with crimped edges and no crust was called a "pasty" and had been a popular dish in northern Michigan since the nineteenth century. Eventually, though, the parties reached a private settlement.
[edit] Patent Reexamination
During the legal proceedings, Albie's filed a request for reexamination with the USPTO asking that the patent be reexamined in light of the new prior art. As of April 2006, the patent was reexamined and the claims were rejected. Smucker's has appealed the rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI). The BPAI has yet to render its judgement.
[edit] Commercial Sales
Currently, Smucker's is selling the patented sandwiches under the "Uncrustables" trademark. They have built a plant in Scottsville, Kentucky to produce the product. Annual sales are around $US 60 million.[2]
[edit] References
- U.S. Patent 6,004,596: Sealed crustless sandwich
- Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner, Innovation and its Discontents: How our broken patent system is endangering innovation and progress, and what to do about it (ISBN 0-691-11725-X; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 25-26, 32-34.
