Pharmaceutical megacorporation Bristol Myers Squibb will pay out $11 million to settle a lawsuit charging it with illegal marketing tactics to keep generic HIV medications off the market.

The suit, filed by veteran LGBTQ rights activist Peter Staley in 2019, charged three pharma giants — Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Gilead — with making exclusive deals to use only their drugs, and not generic substitutes, in any so-called "cocktail therapies" designed to combat HIV infections.

According to Staley's court filings, this applied even after patents on the companies' drugs had run out, keeping lower-cost generics out of the mix. Individual purchasers were therefore forced to pay more for the final HIV cocktail treatments.

Writing about Gilead on Twitter, Staley explained how the companies manipulated the pharma market to keep their profits high.

"How did a company that invented only 2 antivirals end up dominating the market?" Staley asked.

"Buried in Gilead's SEC filings, our lawyers found the answers. As they partnered w/other cos. to make combo-pills, the contracts kinda said 'never make the same pill with a generic...'

"The deal went both ways. Each company agreed not to make a combo pill using a generic version of the other company's drug. Ultimately, we think 12 far cheaper combo pills have been blocked from the market. Is it any wonder there's been no price competition?"

The $11 million settlement will be paid out to compensate HIV patients who paid more than they would have had they been able to buy generic meds.

The settlement only involves Bristol Myers Squibb. Johnson & Johnson and Gilead are awaiting court trials.

If the settlement is approved by a federal judge, not only would past patients be compensated for their overpayments but a generic version of the cocktail treatment Evotaz, comprising atazanavir and cobicstat, would be available to future patients. The first ingredient is made by Bristol Myers Squibb and the latter by Gilead.

If the settlement is not approved, generics might be out of the picture until September 2029.

Although Bristol Myers Squibb reportedly agreed to the settlement, it still denies any wrongdoing.

"While we believe the plaintiffs' claims are without merit," the company said in an email statement, "we are pleased to put this matter behind us so that we can continue to focus our resources on advancing more scientific innovations for patients in areas of significant unmet need."

When the lawsuit surfaced in 2019, a Gilead spokesperson said the company "entered into partnerships with other companies with the goal of bringing lifesaving therapies to patients in need," and "any suggestion that we had improper motives is absolutely false."

Peter Staley was an early member of ACT UP, spearheading the group's fundraising efforts. He later founded the Treatment Action Guerillas (TAG, later renamed Treatment Action Group).

Staley figures prominently in the 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague, which depicts the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the actions of ACT UP and TAG. For the film, director David France relied heavily on archival footage, much of it taken from VHS tapes in Staley's personal collection.