>I presume there's more in the ultimatum than the article had. I remember there have been some issues about Brazil's parmaceutical companies providing cheap HIV medication to some African countries, and thre's been some arm-twisting from here that Brazil should sign some sort of copyright-on-medications contract so that they would have to raise the price by a factor of at least two, if they were allowed to keep the production in the first place. Not sure this was mentioned this time, but I'm sure it wasn't completely off the table.

Yes, I heard a Bolivian-Brazilian friend commentong something about Lula stating something to the effect that the lives of millions of people are more important than the huge profits of the pharmaceutical companies, and not wanting to "be reasonable" on this issue - and just going ahead and producing clones of the AIDS drugs.

Well, now, these are just some rumors or comments I heard; I am not sure how close this is to Brazil's official policy; but I think that there are, indeed, copyright issues that complicate Brazil's relations with some other countries.