The Thailand Competition Commission is meeting this week to hear a complaint filed by various AIDS activists that the drugmaker violated Thai law by threatening not to sell new drugs in the country, according to Essential Action, a Washington, DC-based consumer group. Abbott made that move earlier this year after Bangkok issued a compulsory license for its Kaletra AIDS med, although later agreed to sell a new, lower-strength pediatric version.

Drugmakers, in general, are concerned with Thailand’s actions, which included issuing compulsory licenses for other widely used meds. The US Trade Rep, meanwhile, placed Bangkok on its Priority Watch list. But while negotiations have so far yielded little progress, Abbott’s reaction hasn’t drawn uniform backing from pharma. “That’s rather harsh,” Schering-Plough ceo Fred Hassan told Pharmalot this summer. “Why would you want to deprive people of new drugs?”

Whether Abbott violated the Thai Competition Act remains to be seen. Either way, the proceedings are likely to highlight the enmity between the drugmaker and the country and, in the process, underscore the extent to which retaliation is a useful negotiating tool. Meanwhile, one law professor who has been critical of Abbott’s posture, Sean Flynn, associate director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington College of Law, maintains the drugmaker did, indeed, contravene Thai law.

Here’s a portion of what he submitted to the commission on behalf of the activists: “This case appears to raise exactly the kind of socially harmful behavior that the law was intended to prohibit. While Thailand would have no recourse if Abbott simply pulled out of all operations in Thailand, as long as the company continues to profit from sales in the country, Thailand has the authority to punish the firm’s behavior that exploit its market dominance to the detriment of Thai consumers.”