McDonald's restaurants finally have a solution to the broken McFlurry machine problem

NEW YORK– A broken McDonald’s McFlurry machine, perhaps one of life’s biggest annoyances, has finally been resolved thanks to a court ruling.

McDonald’s franchises have so far been unable to repair the soft-serve machines themselves because the Taylor manufacturing company owns the copyright and exclusive rights to repair the machines.

The United States Copyright Office last week granted a copyright waiver that gives restaurants the “right to repair the machines” by bypassing the digital locks that prevented them from being repaired. The inability to make timely repairs is a bane to the customers’ existence, so much so that there is a third-party website called McBroken.com that tracks their availability.

The exemption, which comes into effect on Monday, was requested by advocacy group Public Knowledge and Repair website iFixIt to allow third parties to bypass digital locks on the machines for repairs. Although the entire request was not granted, commercial restaurant equipment was granted a limited exemption.

Public Knowledge and iFixIt collaborated on this problem after the latter group took apart an ice cream maker and found “many easily replaceable parts.”

The decision will lead to an “overdue shake-up in the commercial food preparation industry,” said Meredith Rose, senior policy advisor at Public Knowledge.

“There is nothing vanilla about this win; an exemption for commercial food preparation equipment at the retail level will spark a surge in third-party repair activity and allow businesses to better serve their customers,” Rose said in a statement.

McDonald’s and Taylor did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Broken ice cream machines are such a stain on McDonald’s reputation that even competitors mock them for it. And a solution may not come soon enough: according to McBroken, almost 15% of the ice machines have been broken since Monday.