The Zhitong Finance App learned that on Monday, an American judge rejected Novo Nordisk (NVO.US)'s request to ban LLY.US (LLY.US) from continuing to advertise diet pills. The Danish pharmaceutical company believes the advertisement in question is false and misleading, and the market covered by the advertisement has annual sales of tens of billions of dollars.
US District Judge Zahid Quraishi (Zahid Quraishi) in Trenton, New Jersey, said Novo Nordisk should not receive an initial ban because it failed to prove that Eli Lilly's advertising threatened its own sales, damaged its reputation, or caused lasting damage to its clinical reputation.
According to Kurashi, Novo Nordisk's claim about irreparable damage “is insufficient to prove the need to grant the extraordinary relief it is seeking.” The judge made this ruling after a two-day hearing in late August.
Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly in July, alleging that advertisements for the diet drug Zepbound and the diabetes drug Mounjaro compared high doses of these products with lower doses of Novo Nordisk Wegovy and Ozempic, in violation of federal and state false advertising and unfair competition laws.
The narrator for one of the ads claims — with a written disclaimer — that people who used Zepbound lost an average of 50 pounds (23 kg), while those who used Wegovy lost an average of 33 pounds (15 kg).
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said via email: “Although we are disappointed with the court's ruling, today's ruling did not determine whether Eli Lilly's advertisement was false or misleading. The lawsuit in this case is still ongoing. Everyone should have clear, accurate, and up-to-date information when making health decisions.”
Indianapolis based Eli Lilly denied any wrongdoing and said it was satisfied with the ruling.
Weight loss medicine is already a big racetrack
Diet pills have become an important business for large pharmaceutical companies. The US is one of the few countries that allows prescription drugs to be directly advertised to consumers.
In the 25-page ruling, Cullahi said that although Novo Nordisk's witnesses are credible, the impact of Eli Lilly's advertisement on the market was negligible at most from April to July, and the number of prescriptions for Novo Nordisk products remained stable.
The judge said that monetary compensation could cover any “non-minor damage” Novo Nordisk may have suffered without the ban.
Kurashi also believes that based on “very preliminary records,” Novo Nordisk's case was “unconvincing,” yet he did not rule on the merits of the case.
According to court documents, Novo Nordisk reported combined sales of its weight loss drugs and Ozempic in 2025 about $32 billion.
The pharmaceutical company is trying to reclaim its share of the US injectable diet drug market, which is expected to exceed $100 billion by the end of this decade.