Umckaloabo gets competition

Umckaloabo gets competition - Schwabe seems relaxed

With Umckaloabo, naturopaths, doctors and pharmacies have been using the product range of naturopathy for over 30 years as an effective medication for colds. After a patent dispute, which ended negative for the manufacturer Schwabe, observers feared now the "Aus" of the successful preparations. Already yesterday, however, could be heard from the home of the manufacturer a clear all-clear.

After Tuesday the pharmaceutical manufacturer Dr. When Willmar Schwabe was revoked the patent for the production of extracts from the plants Pelargonium sidoides and Pelargonium reinforme, fears of the complete disappearance of the products from the market quickly spread. Dr. Traugott Ullrich, spokesman for the company, made it clear that the patent dispute was only an extraction process for the production of the drugs from the plants, but not the drugs that are on the market under the name Umckaloabo.

Since September 2002, only the company Schwabe was allowed to extract the active substances by the said method. With technical and ethical justifications competing companies and non-governmental organizations objected to the patent of the Karlsruhe-based company. Now the European Parliament has decided that manuals with technical instructions on the controversial manufacturing process have already existed and therefore are not inventions by Schwabe. The Evangelical Development Service (EED) welcomed the decision as „great success in the fight against biopiracy“, as the extraction from the geranium roots is a traditional African process.

The revocation of the patent now also allows other producers of phyto-drugs to produce the coveted cold preparations with this method. Due to the good position on the market and the hurdles that are ahead of a competitor product to the approval as a drug, see Ullrich no danger to the „powerful brand“ Umckaloabo, which has been available in tablet form since last fall.
Despite obvious serenity, it is not surprising that Schwabe, after receiving the written notice, strongly considers the possibility of lodging a complaint against the decision of the Patent Office. Does the company, according to its own statement, in particular to avert the allegation of „unlawfully appropriated traditional knowledge“, Perhaps also the fact plays a role that Schwabe converts alone in Germany with Umckaloabo annually 40 million euro. (Jeanette Viñals Stein, Naturopath, 29.01.2010)