Kraft 680 lb Block of Cheese Patent
How I Helped Kraft Patent a 680 Pound Block of Mozzarella Cheese
You know, one of the fun things about being a patent attorney is working with a lot of different kinds of technologies, a lot of different kinds of inventors, a lot of different companies and a lot of different industries.
I'm Rich Beem. I'm a patent attorney in Chicago. And I handled a matter for Kraft Foods that involved cheese technology. Kraft is very big in cheese, as you may know. So there's a particular kind of cheese that you're, I'm sure, familiar with. It's called mozzarella. Well, mozzarella typically comes in very small balls no larger than the size of one's fist. The reason why is because it is a type of cheese called pasta filata. That means string cheese. And the way string cheese works is that it has to be worked and it takes a lot of energy to work that string cheese into a little ball.
Okay, now change focus. This is the way that inventions happen. There's a particular need, there's a particular technical problem that the inventor is faced with. And there's the problem that Kraft was faced with. They wanted to have large slices of cheese that they could display in the grocery story. And these slices could not be made out of small balls. So what they did is they found a way to take small balls of mozzarella cheese and form them into a huge block. In fact, the block weighed 680 pounds. And by taking these small balls and warming them up and applying pressure they formed them into this mold. And the advantage of that is you can put this big block of cheese into slicing machines and you can package it very nicely in uniform slices that can be sold in the grocery story, and are more convenient for people to use at home. And that's how I came to prepare and file the patent application on the 680 pound block of mozzarella, which has issued as patent.
You have a particular niche technology that you have been working on. If you'd like to patent it, that's what I do. Call me. I'm at 312-201-0011. Thank you.
