Patent ID: 8739568

Claim:
An appliance modular system comprising: an appliance wherein the appliance comprises: a cabinet having an exterior surface and an interior surface and defined by a rear wall section, a first side wall section, a second side wall section, a top, a bottom, and at least one appliance door, that together define an interior volume of the appliance; and a refrigerator section within the appliance interior volume and having the same or a smaller volume than the interior volume of the appliance, wherein the appliance door has an exterior surface and an interior surface having a door liner; at least one feature module configured to be removably engaged and disengaged with the appliance without the use of tools and wherein the feature module comprises a utility engagement system that provides at least one utility engagement system, a utility sourced from the appliance to the feature module and includes a protrusion and a recess that releasably and matingly engages the protrusion and either the recess or the protrusion of the utility engagement system is on a wall of the module that engages a mounting location of the feature module exterior surface or the interior surface of the cabinet on the appliance and is configured to allow one or more utilities to be delivered to the feature module for use by the feature module from the appliance through the exterior surface or interior surface of the cabinet using the utility engagement system when the protrusion and the recess are matingly engaged with one another and the mounting location of the feature module on the appliance further comprises the protrusion or recess not located on the wall of the feature module; and utility supply module comprising: a common interface configured to removably engage at least one feature module without the use of tools, wherein the interface comprises a module recognition device for identifying the feature module; and at least one refillable reservoir configured to store a plurality of supplemental utilities and provide supplemental utilities via the common interface to the feature module in excess of utilities the feature module receives from the utility engagement system and wherein at least one of the plurality of utilities is supplied to the feature module when the utility supply module is engaged to the feature module.