India today complained to the UN intellectual property rights body, WIPO, that some multinational firms have launched campaign against country's pharmaceutical industry, which has broken their "cartel" in the generic drugs.

"We know how the campaign was there.(They) still continue to misinform, mislead and confuse when it comes to the Indian generics, which have brought a major change in the world," Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma informed Francis Gurry, the Director General of Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), here.

Several consignments of off-patent generic drugs by Indian firms have been seized in the recent past in Europe on way to destinations like Brazil and some African nations.

While these are off-patent drugs, some of the European nations have confiscated alleging they violated their IPRs.

"There was a time when there was suffocating stranglehold of multinational drug cartels in the anti-retrovial drugs for HIV AIDS," Sharma said.

It was the Indian pharmaceutical firms which have brought down the annual HIV AIDS treatment cost from USD 11,000 to USD 400, he said at a meeting jointly organised by the ministry, WIPO and the FICCI.

Africa and Latin America are major markets for India's low cost drugs used for treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The two continents account for around 15 per cent of India's total pharmaceutical exports of about Rs 40,000 crore.