McDonald's franchises haven't been able to fix the soft serve ice cream machines on their own because manufacturing company Taylor owns the copyright and exclusive rights to fix the machines - until now.
The United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemption last week that gives restaurants the "right to repair" the machines by bypassing the digital locks that prevented them from being fixed. The inability to make timely fixes has been a bane of the customers' existence, so much so, that there's a third-party website called McBroken.com that tracks their availability.
The exemption, which goes into effect Monday, was requested by advocacy group Public Knowledge and repairs website iFixIt to allow third parties to circumvent digital locks on the machines for repairs. Although the full request wasn't granted, commercial restaurant equipment received a narrow exemption.
Public Knowledge and iFixIt teamed together on the issue after the latter group broke apart an ice cream machine and found "lots of easily replaceable parts."
The decision will lead to an "overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry," according to Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge.
"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," Rose said in a statement.
McDonald's and Taylor didn't immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.
Broken ice cream machines have been such a blemish on McDonald's reputation that even competitors mock them for it. And perhaps a fix can't come quick enough: Nearly 15% of ice cream machines are broken as of Monday, according to McBroken.
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