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Brazil Threatens to Break Patent on Drug

AIDS activists and humanitarian groups are praising Brazil for taking the first step by any country to break an AIDS drug patent and produce copycat versions, a decision they hope leads to massive exports to other poor countries devastated by the disease.

But property-rights advocates and the pharmaceutical industry are equating the nation's high-stakes move against U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories Inc. as government-sanctioned piracy of intellectual property driven by greed.

Brazil has repeatedly forced AIDS drugs manufacturers to reduce prices by issuing threats to break patents during the past several years, but it made an unprecedented legal decision last week after it didn't get as much of a price cut as it wanted from Abbott on its Kaletra pill.

Latin America's largest country declared the outcome a public health crisis for its world-renowned free treatment program, and it will use a World Trade Organization process to break the patent and clone Kaletra - unless Abbott gives a steep discount by July 6 or lets Brazil make generic versions of the drug.