The U.S. government is demanding that constantly broken-down soft serve ice cream machines at McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants be more easily fixable.
In a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office this week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust division called for exemptions for "commercial soft serve machines" from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that makes it difficult for franchise owners to do their own repairs or hire a third-party repair technician.
Currently, only technicians licensed by the company that makes McDonald’s soft serve ice cream machines are allowed to do digital repairs.
The joint letter to the Copyright Office said, "In the Agencies’ view, renewing and expanding repair-related exemptions would promote competition in markets for replacement parts, repair, and maintenance services, as well as facilitate competition in markets for repairable products."
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They added that "soft serve equipment breakdown can lead to $625 per day loss of sales … there are long wait times for authorizer repairs, and … a licensed repair technician charges over $300 per 15 minutes."
In 2021, the FTC started looking into complaints by consumers and McDonald’s franchise owners, who claimed they were losing money on soft serve machines that were constantly breaking down while waiting for them to be fixed by an authorized technician.
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In 2022, McDonald’s was sued by an ice cream repair company for $900 million, after the company banned franchise owners from using a product of theirs which allows for an easy fix of soft serve machines.
The device would allow franchise owners to troubleshoot digital problems with the machine via Wi-Fi, rather than waiting for an authorized fix by Taylor, the restaurant equipment company that exclusively makes McDonald’s ice cream machines.
McDonald’s claimed the device violated the machine’s warranty and said it could cause "serious human injury," according to the New York Post.
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Fox Business has reached out to McDonald's and Taylor for comment.
