The AIDS Law Project and Treatment Action Campaign filed a competition complaint in South Africa, charging that the drugmaker refuses to grant a sufficient number of licenses to generic companies to import and sell its AIDS medicine, efavirenz, also known as Stocrin. As a result, the groups says that Merck is violating the South African Competition Act. This is the complaint and accompanying submissions.

The organizations charge that Merck has “collectively threatened access to comprehensive treatment for HIV/AIDS in both public and private sectors” by preventing access to cheaper generic efavirenz, which is generally used in conjunction with other AIDS drugs. The drugmaker’s actions place “the sustainability of supply of EFV products in South Africa under threat,” according to the lawsuit. The complaint requests that a compulsory license be granted as a remedy, but doesn’t specify the terms. We’ve asked Merck for a comment, but have not yet heard back.

This is the second competition complaint filed by the two organizations against a drugmaker with AIDS meds - the last such action took place in 2003 against Glaxo and Boehringer Ingelheim - and reflects a new strategy by activists to use competition law to force drugmakers to provide access to what are deemed essential medicine patents.

“Competition law appears especially promising in this regard,” says Sean Flynn, associate director for the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington College of Law, in explaining the complaint. “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.”