Again, according to the Times, the company owed more than $11 million to Regions Bank on eight different promissory notes. In 2011, Dippin’ Dots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court in Kentucky. The Federal Circuit Court ruled that Dippin’ Dots’s method of making frozen ice cream pellets was invalid because it was obvious. Frosty Bites Distribution, LLL aka Mini Melts, it was determined that Jones had sold a similar version of the product he eventually patented to more than 800 customers more than one year prior the filing of the patent, making the company’s claim against Mini Melts unfounded. Technically, an inventor of a new product (or process) is required to apply for a patent within one year of inventing the product or the product is considered to be “public art” and the right to file for a patent is forfeited. One of the arguments that Mini Melts used in undermining Dippin’ Dots was that the company committed patent fraud by not disclosing that it had sold its ice cream product one year prior to applying for its patent.
The New York Times cites a memo prepared by the law firm Zuber & Taillieu: A federal court jury invalidated Jones’ patent for “cryogenic encapsulation” on a technicality: Jones had sold the product for over a year before filing for the patent.
In 2007, Dippin’ Dots entered a patent battle with the competitor “ Mini Melts” (Frosty Bites Distribution)-a legal defeat that would ultimately contribute to the company’s financial struggles. In the mid-2000s, when the recession made it difficult for the average amusement-park-goer to drop the extra dollars for the fun dessert, Dippin’ Dots plummeted in sales.
#TINY BALLS OF ICE CREAM MOVIE#
Today, the company sells about 1.5 million gallons of dots a year and can be found in 100 shopping centers and retail locations, 107 amusement parks and more than one thousand stadiums, movie theaters and other entertainment venues across the United States.īut, 26 years after its invention, can we still call it the “Ice Cream of the Future”? Now that competitors including Mini Melts and MolliCoolz caught on and began shaking things up with their own versions of the flash-frozen dessert, has the novelty begun to fade? By flash-freezing ice cream into tiny pellets with liquid nitrogen, Jones made the ice crystals in his dessert 40 to 50 times smaller than in regular ice cream-something he marketed as “the future” of the classic summer snack. When he first made Dippin’ Dots in 1987, the treat required a little more than a hand crank. As a child, he and his neighbors would get together and make homemade ice cream with an old hand crank: he’d fill up the machine with cream and sugar, add ice and salt to lower the temperature below zero and enjoy the dessert on the front porch. He grew up on a small farm in Pulaski County, Illinois. Curt Jones, founder and CEO of Dippin’ Dots, was always interested in ice cream and science.
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