By Jonathan Stempel
Oct 26 (Reuters) - A US judge rejected on Monday Novo Nordisk's request to block Eli Lilly from continuing advertisements for weight-loss drugs, a market with tens of billions of dollars of annual sales, that the Danish drugmaker considered false and misleading.
US District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton, New Jersey, said Novo Nordisk did not deserve a preliminary injunction, having failed to show that Eli Lilly's ads threatened sales, undermined its goodwill, or caused lasting
damage to its clinical reputation.
The judge called Novo Nordisk's claim of irreparable harm "inadequate to warrant the extraordinary relief it seeks." He ruled after a two-day hearing in late August.
Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly in July, saying ads for the obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro violated federal and state false advertising and unfair competition laws by comparing higher doses of those products with lower doses of Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Ozempic.
One commercial included a voiceover claim, with a written disclaimer, that people using Zepbound on average lost 50 pounds (23 kg) while people using Wegovy on average lost 33 pounds (15 kg).
Novo Nordisk and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Eli Lilly, based in Indianapolis, has denied wrongdoing and said it was pleased with the decision.
Weight-loss drugs have become major businesses for large pharmaceutical companies. The United States is among a handful of countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicines.
In his 25-page decision, Quraishi said that while Novo Nordisk's witnesses were credible, Eli Lilly's ads had at most a negligible impact between April and July, with prescriptions for Novo Nordisk's products remaining stable.
The judge also said money damages could compensate Novo Nordisk for any "nontrivial harm" it might suffer absent an injunction.
Novo Nordisk reported combined sales of about $32 billion for obesity medicines and Wegovy in 2025, court papers show.
The drugmaker is working to regain market share in the United States for its injectable obesity drugs, a market projected to exceed $100 billion by the end of the decade.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Sneha S K in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel)
