Abbott Laboratories Inc, one of the greediest and most despised Pharma in its league has agreed to pay between $10 million and $27.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AIDS patients over the company’s 400 percent price hike of the HIV drug Norvir, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Back in late 2003, Abbott increased the price of Norvir’s average daily cost per patient five times to compensate for the smaller doses of Norvir needed when used as a booster rather than as a standalone drug.

Where do they get such idea at Abbot Inc. is a mystery but it is not the first time the company is caught in a fight with HIV/AIDS activists or had to retreat from hardball tactics. In 2006, following the decision by the Thai government to issue a compulsory licence for Kaletra, Dirk Van Eden, Abbott’s HIV communications director and not very well informed, said he was “disappointed” to see a 24-per-cent increase in the Thai defence spending compared with just 4.7 per cent for health in the next fiscal year (maybe there was less soldiers, hence the need to pay them more?)

But when it became clear that Abbot was not going to win the fight against the Thai government despite heavy handed attacks and bellow the belt tactic, the company finally conceded a price of $1,000 per year per patient down from an initial $2,200 (if there was a need to prove that drug pricing is rather unfathomable in the world of Big Pharma, here it is).

But it is not only HIV/AIDS activists who are on Abbot Inc.’s trail: the company still faces six other antitrust lawsuits filed by 16 companies, including rival SmithKline Beacham Corp.

“The patients and others, including several rival drug makers, accused the company of raising Norvir’s price to drive up the cost of competitors’ AIDS cocktails and drive traffic to Abbott’s newly introduced multi-drug cocktail called Kaletra.”

If Abbot Inc. had not settled, it may have faced as much as $1 billion in damages. So much would have been lost for their R&D (I am being sarcastic).

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