Good riddance to Cereality™

I read in the Daily Collegian that Cereality, the cereal bar, is closing up shop in State College. I was filled with a great sense of Schadenfreude upon hearing of their misfortune. I assure you that my spiteful feelings are not due to Cereality's cutesy image or laughable prices. In fact, my scorn is due entirely to the companies use of their asinine business process patent applications to hinder their competitors. In my opinion, they are symptomatic of the US patent system.

The Cereality patent applications (11/119,336; 11/518,374 and 11/078,686) describe systems that will seem very familiar to anyone that has ever been to a college dining hall. Some of my favorite claims include:

4. The quick-serve restaurant of claim 1 wherein the carry-out containers include leak-proof, paperboard containers.

6. The quick-serve restaurant of claim 1, further comprising a self-serve milk station configured to dispense at least two different types of milk.

11. The quick-serve restaurant of claim 1, further comprising at least one viewing screen configured to show animated cartoon features for viewing by the customers.

Of course, there is one claim that seems genuinely novel:

12. The quick-serve restaurant of claim 1, further comprising a cereal bar maker for making cereal bars containing customer-selected ingredients.

but, as far as I can tell, that isn't the one being used to intimidate competitors.

Ultimately, I think that their expansion will be hampered by a weak business model as shown in the Collegian article. They're leasing retail space just like any other restaurant, but their product is strongly perceived as a breakfast-only food. Also, once the novelty wears off, who is going to pay restaurant prices for a bowl of cereal? Unlike a traditional restaurant, it seems that it would be trivial for any person to reproduce their products at home.