me' by which it provides Glaxo Wellcome prescription medicines to financially disadvantaged individuals. (http://www.glaxowellcome.com/community.htm).
             It is this point that I would like to summarise the case that the subject company has been involved in the last few months. There are around thirty-five million people in the world that are HIV positive (AIDS). Twenty of them are in the sub-Saharan Africa. Also, three million die every year from the virus. In developed countries with strong economies drug treatments can help infected people to survive. However, their prices ($ 10,000 to $15,000 per person per year) are not affordable for the vast majority of Africans. Drug companies use patents and intellectual property protections to prevent cheaper generic versions of medicine to be distributed. These generic versions can actually reduce prices by ninety-five per cent. This prevention is not happening because drug companies fear that they will lose money in developing countries but because this competition will force them to reduce their prices in developed countries as well.
             In August 2000, Glaxo Wellcome threatened an Indian drug producer (Cipla) objecting to Cipla's distribution of a small amount of Anti-Aids drugs for which Glaxo Wellcome claims that holds their patent rights. As a result, in November 2000, Cipla announced it would stop exporting the particular medicine, even though it contested Glaxo's patent claims (Mokhiber and Weissman: 2001). Furthermore, the South-African government faced on court the drug industry (including Glaxo Wellcome) for importing generic medicine as its local legislation allowed to do so.
             Glaxo Wellcome's decision to take to court the South-African government was not the outcome of a simple process. The company found it self in front of business dilemmas including mainly profitability versus ethical behaviour. For some academics and professionals these are two different and contra...