$900 million ice cream machine lawsuit against Rockton company, McDonald's moving forward

A Rockton, Illinois, company in the middle of a nationwide war over the broken ice cream machines at McDonald's is going to have to stay there.

A California judge has rejected McDonald's request to dismiss a lawsuit involving Rockton's Taylor Company, which makes the ice cream machines, which have a reputation among McDonald's ice cream fans for being frequently out of commission.

Kytch, a California tech company, filed a $900 million complaint in March, accusing McDonald’s and Taylor of defamation and stealing trade secrets.

The complaint claims that in 2019, while Kytch was testing a device that allows users to remotely fix broken ice cream machines at a number of McDonald's locations, McDonald’s and Taylor were stealing the information and secretly developing their own device that did the same thing.

Kytch says that in November 2020 McDonald’s sent out a series of emails to franchisees, recommending they pull Kytch's devices from their machines. The company says the emails were defamatory, falsely claiming the devices voids warranties, steals confidential information and poses a serious safety threat.

Ice cream machine lawsuit:McDonald's asks judge to toss $900M lawsuit involving Rockton company

Kytch also says that Taylor and McDonald’s enlisted a group of Kytch trial participants and accessed password-protected areas of their device’s interface to develop Taylor’s “Open Kitchen,” a competing product that would “prevent Kytch from fixing the machines."

Kytch owner Jeremy O'Sullivan said his company demanded that Taylor retract its statements about Kytch's technology, but said Taylor refused to do so.

"Taylor tried to falsely smear Kytch as dangerous and ultimately destroy our business that we've been building for the past 10 years because our technology gave machine owners the right to repair their own Taylor machines rather than having to spend huge dollars fueling Taylor's wildly successful repair racket," he said.

"Ultimately, the court's most recent decision means we now have the opportunity to pursue justice against Taylor's false smears and their anti-competitive behavior."

Taylor and McDonald’s are represented by Wilmington, Delaware, attorneys Edward Micheletti and Brian E. Farnan, respectively. Calls to Micheletti and Farnan were not returned.

Chris Green: 815-987-1241; cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen