Novo Nordisk sues Eli Lilly over misleading weight loss drug ads

The suit, filed successful the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, seeks a imperishable tribunal bid prohibiting the ads and compelling Lilly to contented corrective advertising. Novo is additionally pursuing fiscal damages and has enactment Lilly connected announcement that, absent a voluntary removal of the ads, it intends to record for a preliminary injunction wrong days to halt them during litigation. Lilly did not respond to a petition for comment.

Novo's circumstantial ailment centers connected ads that comparison the highest doses of Lilly's drugs to little doses of Novo's treatments, without accounting for newer information connected Novo's products. One TV commercial, which the suit says has received much than 700 cardinal impressions since airing astir the extremity of April, states that patients connected Zepbound suffer 50 pounds connected mean compared to 33 pounds connected the 2.4-milligram dose of Wegovy. Novo argues that its precocious approved 7.2-milligram high-dose mentation of Wegovy, which entered the marketplace successful March, showed mean value nonaccomplishment of 47 pounds — a effect the institution describes arsenic comparable to Zepbound's show successful Lilly's astir caller trial. Novo's ailment extends the aforesaid allegation to Lilly's diabetes advertising, arguing that ads comparing Mounjaro with Ozempic likewise omit much caller information from a higher-dose mentation of Novo's drug.

"While it whitethorn person been close to accidental that earlier 7.2 milligrams became disposable for Wegovy, it is nary longer close to accidental that," John Kuckelman, Novo's radical wide counsel, told CNBC. He added that the suit comes aft Lilly declined to propulsion oregon amend the ads successful effect to a ceremonial cease-and-desist missive Novo sent successful April.

Novo's ineligible claims invoke the Lanham Act alongside a scope of national and authorities statutes governing unfair contention and mendacious advertising.

The suit arrives arsenic Novo works to retrieve crushed it has mislaid to Lilly successful the value nonaccomplishment cause market. Though Novo entered the marketplace archetypal with Wegovy, Lilly has since overtaken it successful sales, seizing the commercialized pb crossed the category. Novo has been rolling retired a value nonaccomplishment pill that surpassed 3 cardinal U.S. prescriptions, on with strategical terms cuts, arsenic portion of its effort to claw backmost marketplace share. The planetary obesity cause marketplace is connected way to scope $120 cardinal a twelvemonth by 2030, according to Bloomberg.