Novo Nordisk has filed a lawsuit against rival Eli Lilly in a U.S. federal court, accusing the American pharmaceutical company of misleading advertising by claiming its weight-loss drugs outperform Novo’s treatments.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that Lilly violated federal and state false advertising and unfair competition laws, including the Lanham Act. According to Novo, Lilly’s marketing campaigns for obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro unfairly compared the highest approved doses of its own medicines with lower doses of Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic, while excluding Novo’s recently approved higher-dose Wegovy, which the Danish company says delivers significantly greater weight loss.
Novo is seeking a court order requiring Lilly to withdraw the disputed advertisements and launch a corrective advertising campaign. The company said it may also seek a preliminary injunction if the ads are not voluntarily removed. Novo claims it had sent Lilly a cease-and-desist letter in April following U.S. approval of the 7.2-milligram dose of Wegovy, but Lilly did not respond. Novo further argues that there have been no direct head-to-head clinical trials comparing the highest approved doses of the competing drugs, adding that separate late-stage trials showed average weight loss of about 48 pounds with Zepbound and 47 pounds with the highest-dose Wegovy.
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