"If we're pirates, (let them) litigate against us," Cipla chairman Yusuf Hamied said from London. "Where is the question of piracy when we abide by the laws of the land?"

Cipla startled the global pharmaceutical community last month, when it offered to supply drugs to AIDS sufferers in poor countries for less than $1 a day, sharply undercutting multinational pharmaceutical firms.GlaxoSmithKline holds a patent on lamivudine, one of the drugs in the triple drug cocktail Cipla is offering.

The drug cocktail costs between $10,000 and $12,000 per year per patient in developed countries.

Indian laws protect only the processes by which drugs are made and not the products themselves, allowing domestic firms to make drugs which are under patent in other countries as long as they use a process different from that of the patent holder.

Garnier made the comments on Monday at a healthcare forum in Boston. "They're pirates. That's about what they are...They've never done a day of research in their lives," he said.

"Cipla is not doing this to get the Nobel prize. They are fighting for their lives," he said, referring to impending changes in Indian patent laws that would protect products.

Mr Hamied scoffed at the comments. "See my financial results...I don't need to fight. India has a population of one billion and we have a huge market here." Hamied also pointed the finger at GlaxoSmithKline, which he said was selling its anti-ulcer drug Zinetac in the United States at several times its price in India. "Someone is clearly being pirated against," he said. "The reason they sell at low prices in India is the fact that there are no monopolies here." Several Indian companies produce copies of Glaxo's ulcer drug. India's drug prices are among the lowest in the world.

"A large proportion of research expenditure in multinationals goes towards maintaining monopolies," Mr Hamied said.

He also hit out at suggestions by Garnier that Cipla's offer of cheap AIDS drugs was a public relations exercise. "What PR exercise?" he said. "We don't even have a PR firm." Mr Hamied said Cipla had written to GlaxoSmithKline in December, asking for a compulsory license for its AIDS drugs in exchange for royalty GSK."