McDonald’s lawsuit claims restaurant spread lies about company that fixes McFlurry machines
Overview of McDonald’s McFlurry machine repair lawsuit:
- WHO: McDonald’s was sued by technology company Kytch, Inc.
- Why: The lawsuit alleges McDonald’s lied about the safety of Kytch’s technology to kill competition with its own stalled software and continue a “service and repair racket” with machine maker McFlurry Taylor.
- Or: The case is pending in federal court in Delaware.
McDonald’s has created ‘false ‘safety’ claims’ about a company that invented technology to fix notoriously faulty McFlurry machines to kill competition with its own blocked software and continue a ‘service and repair racket’ with machine maker McFlurry Taylor, according to a new lawsuit.
Kytch, Inc. filed a lawsuit in federal court in Delaware alleging violations of numerous trade and consumer laws and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, claiming that McDonald’s and Taylor worked together against Kytch to create a stall tactic for McDonald’s and Taylor’s own product, Open Kitchen.
According to the lawsuit, Jeremy O’Sullivan and Melissa Nelson invented the Kytch solution, which allows McDonald’s franchisees to remotely monitor and control soft-serve machines. Backed by a 2020 Business Insider article, the company’s proprietary technology has gained traction with franchise owners, who have long been plagued by broken ice cream machines.
“Certain franchisees said they paid thousands of dollars a month in service fees to Taylor Company, the maker of the machines, through its many franchised distributors,” the lawsuit says. He further alleges that McDonald’s and Taylor run a service and repair racket, collecting millions in fees from franchise owners each year.
McDonald’s claimed Kytch’s technology posed ‘very serious security risks’
Kytch’s positive media coverage and growing popularity made McDonald’s “all hot and heavy” and led the company to try to steal Kytch’s technology while informing franchise owners that Kytch’s system posed “security risks very serious” for technicians and crews and could cause “serious human injury,” the lawsuit reads.
“Together they [McDonald’s and Taylor] fabricated false “safety” claims to mislead Kytch customers into believing that safety testing determined that the Kytch solution would cause “serious human injury” to users – claims that are, and that McDonald’s and Taylor both knew at the time to be, patently untrue,” the claim reads.
The company says the statements are clearly untrue because McDonald’s and Taylor filed affidavits that they never tested the Kytch solution; Both McDonald’s and Taylor attempted to obtain the devices through Kytch, but were unwilling to sign binding non-disclosure agreements/non-compete agreements to do so. Intertek has certified that Kytch meets all electrical safety requirements per Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and Federal Communications Commission regulations, and Kytch has never received a report of injury from the Kytch solution.
“McDonald’s and Taylor released these misrepresentations to all of Kytch’s current customers and many of its potential customers, including all McDonald’s operators in North America (and Coca-Cola and Burger King),” the report said. trial. He adds that at the same time, McDonald’s and Taylor announced that they would launch their rival Open Kitchen appliance in the first quarter of 2021 “although they always knew they could never meet that deadline.”
“The goal: to convince McDonald’s restaurant owners to cancel their contracts with Kytch and thwart Kytch’s market momentum, giving McDonald’s and Taylor more time to develop their competing Open Kitchen system,” the lawsuit states.
Kytch says he is suing “to set the record straight, to enforce the company’s rights under civil law, to curb McDonald’s anti-competitive behavior, to recover compensatory and punitive damages, to protect the consuming public from false and misleading advertisements and to finally fix McDonald’s broken soft serve machines.
In a statement to Law360McDonald’s says it “owes it to our customers, our team and our franchisees to maintain our rigorous safety standards and to work with fully vetted suppliers in this lawsuit. Kytch’s claims are without merit, and we will respond to the complaint accordingly.
McDonald’s is also facing another lawsuit, this time a class action filed by former employees which accuses the company of violating federal laws by sending misleading and confusing letters about extending their health insurance benefits, which led to former workers losing their insurance and incurring large health bills health care during the pandemic.
Does your local McDonald’s have a working McFlurry machine? Let us know in the comments section below!
Kytch is represented by Brian E. Farnan and Michael J. Farnan of Farnan LLP, Jason Sheasby of Irell & Manella LLP and Elizabeth M. Locke and Daniel P. Watkins of Clare Locke LLP.
the McDonald’s McFlurry Machine Pursuit East Kytch Inc. v. McDonald’s Corp., Case No. 1:22-cv-00279, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
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