NEW YORK — A broken McDonald’s McFlurry machine, arguably one of life’s greatest nuisances, has finally been solved thanks to a court ruling. McDonald’s franchises haven’t been able to fix the soft serve ice cream machines on their own because manufacturing company Taylor owns the copyright and exclusive rights to fix the machines — until now. The United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption last week that gives restaurants the “right to repair” the machines by bypassing the digital locks that prevented them from being fixed.
The inability to make timely fixes has been a bane of the customers’ existence, so much so, that there’s a third-party website called McBroken.com that tracks their availability. The McDonald's machines that make a McFlurry can now be easily more fixed.
The exemption, which goes into effect Monday, was requested by advocacy group Public Knowledge and repairs website iFixIt to allow third parties to circumvent digital locks on the machines for repairs. Although the full request wasn’t granted, commercial restaurant equipment received a narrow exemption. Public Knowledge and iFixIt teamed together on the issue after the latter group broke apart an ice cream machine and found “lots of easily replaceable parts.
” The decision will lead to an “overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry,” according to Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge. “There’s nothing vanilla about this victory.