The protections offered by VEND to franchisees are VERY limited. I haven't re-checked the agreement, but I'm pretty sure that VEND could sell to a competitor if it chose to do so, and it would probably just do a license deal with TCBY without equipment, for that matter, which is even less likely to legally interfere with the franchisee's rights under their agreements.
TCBY and Stoelting jointly developed a yogurt vending machine that TCBY attempted to launch. It looks as though Stoelting tried to make a go of selling the machines itself after TCBY threw in the towel. The machines were pretty plain boxes, with none of the robot sizzle that the Robofusion machines offered. It looks as though yogurt choices were very limited as compared to the VEND kiosk as well.
The enforcement of patent rights is a difficult and very expensive undertaking, and victory is never a certainty. I doubt VEND has the resources to wage war with TCBY or Stoelting, and I note that there are other machines out there that VEND has not seemingly not bothered to complain about - the Frobot machines in northern California, and some products being introduced by international manufacturers that are very robot-oriented.
More importantly, the VEND patents do not appear to provide any protection against the TCBY/Stoelting machine. The VEND patents seem to be limited to machines that have a viewable interior.
All that said, there's a chance that TCBY and Stoelting took the potential for VEND litigation into account, but I doubt that it was the primary reason for their withdrawal from the venture.
AI
