A pair of business owners from Queensland have applied to copyright the term ‘gumby gumby’, a native Australian plant first named gumby gumby by Indigenous people.
In 2008 Katja Amato and Klaus-Otto Von Gliszczynski, owners of GumbyGumby.com, successfully patented the medicinal use of extracts from the gumby gumby leaf.
Wiradjuri Ngemba woman Roxanne Smith says her family has used gumby gumby, a native apricot, “for probably centuries”.
Terri Janke, an Indigenous lawyer, says that challenging the trademark would be expensive, but “if they get [the trademark] they'll be able to stop Indigenous people using ‘gumby gumby’ to market products in the same class, which is your remedies and your gels and your teas”.
Image: National Library of Australia
