Invalidity dossier
US 6004596
Sealed crustless sandwich
Current assignee: Smucker Fruit Processing Co
Added 9/23/2026, 8:46:08 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6004596A
Title: Sealed crustless sandwich
Patent number: US 6004596A
Application number: US08/986,581
Inventors: Len C. Kretchman; David Geske
Original assignee: Menusaver Inc
Current assignee (per listing): Smucker Fruit Processing Co
Prior art date / filing date: 1997-12-08
Publication (grant) date: 1999-12-21
Legal status (as listed): Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2017-12-08
Purpose. The patent describes "a sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly." Stated objects include eliminating crust, retaining an inner filling from seeping into the bread, storing for extended periods (e.g., lunch-box use), reducing wasted bread from discarded crusts, and providing a method of producing such a sandwich.
Plain-language scope. As described in the excerpt, the sandwich comprises a lower bread portion (20), an upper bread portion (22), an upper filling (30b) and lower filling (30a) between them, a center filling (32) sealed between those fillings, and a crimped edge (26) along the outer perimeter sealing the fillings in. The upper/lower fillings are "preferably" peanut butter; the center filling is "preferably" jelly — other edible substances are mentioned but not claimed in the excerpted text. The fillings do not extend into the crimped edge, since foreign substance there would weaken the seal. A cutting cylinder (40) with a sleeve (42) having a notched end (44), notches spaced "approximately every 1/8 inch," penetrates and crimps the bread portions against a supporting plate (12), forming depressions (28) in the crimped edge; crust (24) is thereby removed. The sandwich is preferably placed in airtight resilient packaging (14). The cutting edge (48) "may be formed into various shapes."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6004596](/patent/US6004596)/en
What the excerpt does not establish. The supplied text does not include the actual claims, the full abstract, the specification's prior-art discussion, or any cited references; therefore claim scope, claim count, and claim language cannot be verified from it. It also does not establish the accuracy of the listed assignees or legal status. Per instructions, no litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is provided here.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:41:10 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.