McDonald’s restaurants find solution for infamous broken ice cream machine issues

A court ruling might make McDonald’s ice cream machines, notorious for frequently breaking, easier to fix.

Last week, the United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption that gives restaurants the “right to repair” broken machines by bypassing digital locks that kept them from being fixed.

Manufacturing company Taylor previously owned the copyright and exclusive rights to fix the machines. The new exemption officially went into effect on Monday.

Advocacy group Public Knowledge and repair website iFixIt requested the exemption to allow third parties to circumvent digital locks on the machines for repairs.

“It’s been a long and rocky road to secure a right to repair, and while there are plenty of dips and twists ahead, today’s decision from the Copyright Office will lead to an overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry,” Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, said in a statement.

“There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customers.”

The Copyright Office’s decision didn’t fully address Public Knowledge and iFixit’s request for an examination covering a wider range of commercial and industrial equipment.

McDonald’s broken ice cream machines have been a blemish on the company’s reputation for years. Customers continuously express their displeasure about them on social media, and competitors have launched food deals mocking the issue.

The problem has gotten so bad that a software engineer student launched McBroken, a website that tracks which restaurants have a down ice cream machine, in 2020.