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South African Competition Complaint Brought Against Merck by the Treatment Access Campaign
At noon on November 6, 2007, the AIDS Law Project and Treatment Action Campaign filed a competition complaint against the multinational pharmaceutical company, Merck & Co., and its South African subsidiary, alleging that its refusal to grant sufficient licenses to generic producers to import and sell the anti-AIDS medicine efavirenz ("EFV") (branded as Stocrin®) violates the South African Competition Act.
This is the second competition complaint filed by ALP and TAC against an AIDS drug supplier, and is part of a new wave of action by developing country activists to use competition law to force open access to essential medicine patents. (For more on this topic, see www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/CompetitionPolicyProject.cfm). Competition law appears especially promising in this regard. The same standards that have required Microsoft to open access to its operating software and electricity and telephone monopolies to open access to their wires are justifiably being invoked by the world’s poor to force open access to the most important property rights in the world today – patents that are blocking access to millions in need of cheap and effective AIDS treatment to keep them alive. The South Africa complaint is amply supported by the principles and doctrines of competition law and, more importantly, will build upon South Africa’s existing precedent to chart a course for other developing countries to use their competition laws to promote access to needed medicines.
“The same standards that have required Microsoft to open access to its operating software and electricity and telephone monopolies to open access to their wires are justifiably being invoked by the world’s poor to force open access to the most important property rights in the world today – patents that are blocking access to millions in need of cheap and effective AIDS treatment to keep them alive. The South Africa complaint is amply supported by the principles and doctrines of competition law and, more importantly, will build upon South Africa’s existing precedent to chart a course for other developing countries to use their competition laws to promote access to needed medicines.”
- Sean Flynn, Associate Director,
PIJIP, Washington College of Law
Complaint by TAC
Supportint Affidavits
Further Information