a small company of 2 people created a device called "Kytch," to help easily fix the Mcdonalds ice cream machines that are always broken. it can also predict when a malfunction could happen.
every mcdonalds franchise owner loved this new product because of all the money they saved on repairs. many of them reported spending "thousands of dollars per month in service fees" to the Taylor company in order to fix the ice cream machines.
the Taylor company creates the ice cream machines mcdonalds uses. this company is the only one professionally trained to clean their product because it is so complicated for everyone else to learn. the taylor company says "25% of the company revenue was made on repairs and maintenance." that's a huge amount for just the repairs.
(slightly off topic but still relevant). the Taylor company and Kytch creators worked on a previous device together called frobot. the frobot has the same problem as the ice cream machines: they malfuntion too often. "It became clear to us that there's way more money in broken money machines than machines that actually work" says Kytch co founder Jeremy O'Sullivan.
when mcdonalds discovered Kytch, they told the franchisees to stop using it. McDonald's said in the following statement "After we learned that Kytch's unapproved device was being tested by some of our franchisees, we held a call to better understand what it was and subsequently communicated a potential safety concern to franchisees."
this "safety concern" was bullshit because Taylor decided to reverse engineer a kytch, and use it for themselves. to add insult to injury, McDonald's went so far as to warn other companies, including Coca-Cola and Burger King, not to buy Kytch products. the $900 million lawsuit is an estimate of how much kytch would be worth today if mcdonalds didnt sabotage them.
it makes sense for Taylor to fight so hard for the broken machines since they get paid to repair them. but its a mystery why mcdonalds hates kytch and is siding with Taylor. maybe mcdonalds gets a commission for every repair? nobody knows for sure, but that theory makes sense
this video shows you how complicated and time consuming it is to clean a mcdonald ice cream maker.
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In a non-dramatic sense I hope the clown gets cucked here so that right to repair has even more firm case law to stand on.
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This is the first time I hear about the issue and I'm not a layer or anything, but I already have formed a strong opinion about it which I'm going to share with everyone: I don't think that a third party has a leg to stand on regarding McDonald's ordering its franchisees to buy services from a particular company even if they were blatantly getting kickbacks from it. It's not about right to repair, if McDonald's requires that Ronald McDonald's balls should be painted in a particular shade of turquoise produced by a particular Licensed Partner, there's nothing any other paint maker can do about it.
On the other hand the franchisees themselves could probably sue McDonalds for imposing additional costs not specified in the contract, if they weren't in fact specified in the contract, which they probably weren't.
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If McDonald has a contract with Licensed Paint Company, then the franchise is basically a pyramid scheme at that point.
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It entirely depends on whether the franchisees were given a fair explanation of their responsibilities and their costs. If the costs include buying ridiculously overpriced turquoise paint or whatever, but it's still worth the profits, then I don't see a problem, it's no different from McDonald's telling them that they should only buy the ice cream machines from them in the first place.
Where the suit might grow legs is if there wasn't an explicit clause saying how they are supposed to service those machines and now they found a much cheaper way to do it and suddenly McDonald's is inventing these financially emburdening requirements out of thin air. But again, the harmed parties that should make a class action lawsuit are the franchisees.
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I dont think the case will implicate right to repair, it sounds like its a tort claim for interfering with their business. Idk which tort and Im not going to bother finding the pleadings so I could be wrong
It would probably involve right to repair if the franchisees were coplaintiffs
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Right to repair is in a legal sense a handful of different concepts and legal principles. In this sense, the tort is self-sealing, which has a long case history banning it (classic case: a car company can't sell you a car, and force you to service it only at a business owned/in partnership with them. A modern example of this is how OBDII diagnostic tools and software must be made available to 3rd parties, after about 10 years of proprietary tools coming into the market in the mid-80s).
Right to repair relies on enforcing provisions against self-dealing, and seeks to expand the definition to sneakier tactics, like sealing modular components, software the bricks equipment after maintenance is done, and putting needlessly breakable structures in devices that prevent reassembly.
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Yeah I know all of that but I am saying the article is not clear on what their cause of action is or what relief theyre seeking. The suit is TL;DR because its a Sunday and I aint spending an hour working for free. But theres a link to it in the article so I skimmed out of curiosity and it looks like theyre alleging the following causes of action: deceptive trade practices, negligent interference with business expectancy (idk what this is, we dont have it in leafland under this name), intentional interference with business expectancy (i assume thisis what leafs call intentional interference with economic relations), trade libel, false advertising (x2, different statutes), and tortious interference with contract
They also state conspiracy a few times but not as its own cause of action
So yeah it actually probably will come up.
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