District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleging that the company’s advertising campaigns for its weight-loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro are deceptive. The suit claims that Eli Lilly uses “outdated” clinical trial data to inaccurately portray its medications as superior to Novo Nordisk’s competing treatments.
Dispute Over Clinical Data and Efficacy
The legal action centers on nationwide advertisements that compare the highest doses of Eli Lilly’s products to lower doses of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic. According to the complaint, these campaigns omit information regarding Novo Nordisk’s recently approved high-dose version of Wegovy.
John Kuckelman, Novo Nordisk’s group general counsel and senior vice president, stated that the ads “intentionally” confuse consumers. The lawsuit highlights a television commercial that visually and verbally claims patients using Zepbound lose 50 pounds on average, compared to 33 pounds on the 2.4-milligram dose of Wegovy. Novo Nordisk argues this comparison is misleading because it ignores newer clinical evidence. Specifically, the company cites a study for a 7.2-milligram dose of Wegovy—approved by the FDA in March and available in the U.S. since April—which showed average weight loss of 47 pounds. Novo Nordisk contends this result is clinically consistent
with weight loss seen in Eli Lilly’s most recent rigorous trials for Zepbound.
Legal Claims and Demands
Novo Nordisk is bringing claims under federal and state unfair competition and false advertising laws, including the Lanham Act. The company asserts that while healthcare professionals have access to comprehensive scientific data, consumers often rely on advertising to form their understanding of GLP-1 treatments.
For more on this story, see Novo Nordisk-anslag till KI-forskare för nydanande tester av läkemedel – Karolinska Institutet.
In its filing, Novo Nordisk is seeking:
- A permanent court order to stop Eli Lilly from running the disputed advertisements.
- A requirement for Eli Lilly to issue corrective advertising.
- Unspecified financial damages.
Novo Nordisk previously sent a cease-and-desist request to Eli Lilly in April regarding the advertisements. Kuckelman stated that Eli Lilly did not remove the ads but instead added a footnote that he described as ambiguous, confusing, virtually illegible, and wholly inadequate.
Novo Nordisk has signaled that if the ads are not removed voluntarily, it plans to seek a preliminary injunction in the coming days to block them while the case proceeds.
Context of the GLP-1 Market Rivalry
The lawsuit marks a new phase in the intense commercial competition between the two pharmaceutical giants as they vie for market share in the rapidly expanding GLP-1 category. Eli Lilly’s medications have recently gained favor among many providers and patients due to their reported high efficacy.
To compete, Novo Nordisk has been scaling production for its new high-dose formulation, which is manufactured and packaged at its facility in Clayton, North Carolina. The company has invested in manufacturing capacity to support this launch, aiming to avoid the supply constraints that affected earlier versions of its medications.
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