Sealed crustless sandwich: Difference between revisions

Sealed crustless sandwich

A sealed crustless sandwich with peanut butter and jelly filling (mass-produced)
Type	Sandwich
Course	Lunch, Snack
Place of origin	United States
Main ingredients	Bread, various fillings

A sealed crustless sandwich consists of a filling between two layers of crimp-sealed bread, with the crust removed.

The sandwiches are typically round, square or triangular; the bread can vary, e.g., white or whole wheat; and the sandwiches can be homemade or mass-produced, the latter typically individually wrapped, frozen and packaged. Homemade varieties can be made with common crimping techniques similar to pie crust, ravioli, or dumplings using readily available kitchen tools (e.g., a fork, small spoon or curved knife end to crimp the edges). A purpose-designed "cut and crimp" tool can also be used.^[1]

Mass-production in the U.S. began in 1995 with peanut butter and jelly filling, followed by numerous patent disputes and numerous competitors entering the market. Companies have since marketed sealed crustless sandwiches with an extensive range of fillings, including ham,^[2] cheese,^[2] chocolate-hazelnut spread,^[2] almond butter and jam,^[3] peanut butter and honey,^[2] peanut butter and apple butter, peanut butter and banana — or, prominently, peanut butter and jelly.^[2] In the case of the latter, some companies apply the peanut butter to both interior surfaces of the bread, shielding the jelly from penetrating the bread.

Because of their overall convenience and efficiency, Etheopian-born Kamal Mohamed, founder of the Gallant Tiger brand, called sealed sandwiches "the Swiss Army knife of foods".^[4] As an example of their handiness and portability, pre-packaged, sealed crustless sandwiches were made available to firemen during the 2018 California wildfires,^[5][6]

Mass-produced U.S. brands include crustless sandwiches marketed under the Galant Tiger brand; under the Chubby Snacks brand; EZ Jammers marketed by Albie's Foods; PB Jamwiches marketed by Welch's; Candian-made No Crust Sandwiches, marketed by Walmart; PB + J Crustless Sandwiches as well as Charlottes Crustoffs, marketed by Costco — and prominently, Uncrustables, marketed by Smuckers.

In the United States, mass-produced crustless sealed sandwiches were introduced in 1995, in Fargo North Dakota by David Geske and Len Kretchman ^[7] — at the time marketing as Incredible Uncrustables to schools in the Midwest, with fifty employees making roughly 35,000 of the sealed sandwiches daily by 1998.^[7] Their company was purchased by Smuckers in 1998.^[7] In the early 2000's, Albie's Foods marketed a square mass-produced competitor,^[7] currently manufacturing their EZ Jammers in a triangular shape.

In Japan, Yamazaki Baking has marketed Lunch Pack sealed sandwiches since 1984.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a number of patents for mass-produced versions of a sealed crustless sandwich, which were subsequently reexamined and cancelled for having attempted to patent obvious or well known concepts.

Since roughly 2004, Smucker's marketed its sandwiches under the "Uncrustables" trademark,^[8] building a plant in 2004 in Scottsville, Kentucky.^[9] Smuckers sold $365 million worth of Uncrustables between April 2019 and April 2020 and were projected to sell $500 million the following year. They announced they would build a new $1.1 billion plant in McCalla, Alabama, employing up to 750.^[10]Smuckers offers savory variations, and has discontinued numerous variations, including the microwavable Grilled Cheese Uncrustable (approximately 2003-2014), Ham and Cheddar Bites, Pepperoni Bites and others.

In 2023, Smucker said it took about ten years to prevent "leaky sandwiches," handling the bread so it doesn't create air pockets and using round loaves.^[11]

Chubby Snacks, headquartered in Colorado, markets its sealed sandwiches as more health conscious, using organic, whole wheat bread, each with 2-3 grams of sugar per sandwich, and using medjool dates and monk fruit for sweetness rather than refined sugar.^[12] The company aimed to manufacture 30 million sealed crustless sandwiches by 2024.^[13]

The first claim of Menusaver's patent reads:

1. A sealed crustless sandwich, comprising:
   • a first bread layer having a first perimeter surface coplanar to a contact surface;
   • at least one filling of an edible food juxtaposed to said contact surface;
   • a second bread layer juxtaposed to said at least one filling opposite of said first bread layer, wherein said second bread layer includes a second perimeter surface similar to said first perimeter surface;
   • a crimped edge directly between said first perimeter surface and said second perimeter surface for sealing said filling(s) between said first bread layer and said second bread layer;

     wherein a crust portion of said first bread layer and said second bread layer has been removed.

That is, the patent described a sandwich with a layer of filling in between two pieces of bread which are crimped shut and have their crust removed. The other nine claims of the patent elaborate the idea further, including the coating of two sides of the bread with peanut butter first before putting the jelly in the middle, so that the jelly would not seep into the bread—the layers of filling "are engaged to one another to form a reservoir for retaining the second filling in between".

Many intellectual property experts and members of the general public view this patent as an example of the patent office's inability to properly examine patent applications.^[14] The patent examiner cited only seven previous patents issued between 1963 and 1998, and a 1994 book called 50 Great Sandwiches that were deemed relevant to the novelty and nonobviousness of the invention. He concluded that the invention was indeed novel and not obvious and allowed the claims.^[14]

Since then, many more earlier patents and publications have been found that teach some or all of the different aspects of the invention. These include a 1949 patent (U.S. patent 2,463,439) that describes a device to create these types of sandwiches: "An object of this invention is to provide... a means for locating said filling in the center of the sandwich and sealing the marginal edges of the pieces by heat and pressure to preclude the escape of filling from the finished product... [and] a means for trimming the baked dough pieces". These new pieces of prior art have been brought to the attention of the patent office through a reexamination proceeding. (See below)

The J.M. Smucker Co. also attempted to patent the process of making the sandwich in 2004 (rather than just the sandwich itself) and on April 8, 2005, had its application rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).[1].

In 2001, a small grocery and caterer in Gaylord, Michigan, Albie's Food, Inc., was sent a cease and desist letter from The J.M. Smucker Co., accusing Albie's of violating their intellectual property rights to the "sealed crustless sandwich". Instead of capitulating, Albie's took the case to federal court, noting in their filings a pocket sandwich with crimped edges and no crust was called a "pasty" and had been a popular dish in northern Michigan since the nineteenth century. Federal Court determined that Albie's Foods did not infringe on J.M. Smucker Co. intellectual property rights and was allowed to continue, overturning Smucker's cease and desist.^[15]

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In March 2001, during the legal proceedings, Albie's filed a request for reexamination with the USPTO asking that the patent be reexamined in light of the new prior art. The reexamination serial number is 90/005,949.

In response to the new prior art cited, Smucker's narrowed the wording of their claims to only cover a very specific version of their sealed crustless sandwich. The more narrow claims, for example, only cover sealed crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches where the jelly is held between two layers of peanut butter. Nonetheless, in December 2003, the patent examiner rejected the narrowed claims in light of the new prior art.

Smucker's appealed the rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI). In September 2006, the BPAI reversed the examiner's reasons for rejecting the claims, but found new reasons for rejecting them. They found that the wording in the narrowed claims was too vague to clearly identify exactly what Smucker's is trying to patent. Because Smucker's failed to respond to the BPAI's rejections within the two-month deadline, the PTO mailed a Notice of Intent to Issue a Reexamination Certificate (NIIRC) in December 2006 cancelling all claims. The reexamination certificate was issued on September 25, 2007.

• List of sandwiches

• Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner, Innovation and its Discontents: How our broken patent system is endangering innovation and progress, and what to do about it (ISBN 0-691-11725-X; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 25–26, 32–34.

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