Photo illustration of a group of weight loss pills on a white background.
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novo nordisk The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday. Eli LillyThe company claimed that an advertising campaign for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drug was designed to mislead consumers about its superior efficacy compared to the Danish drugmaker’s rival injectable drugs.
Novo specifically takes issue with national ads that cite “outdated” clinical trials comparing the highest doses of Lilly’s drug to lower doses of Novo’s drug. For example, these campaigns do not include new evidence about Novo’s recently approved high-dose version of the bariatric injection Wegoby. Wegobee entered the market in March and produced weight loss comparable to Lilly’s product.
That “leads them to the inevitable conclusion that Lilly’s drug is better than Novo’s drug, which is not accurate,” Novo’s group general counsel John Kuckelman said in an interview Monday. He said the lawsuit arose after Lilly refused to remove or modify certain ads despite Novo’s formal cease-and-desist request in April.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, Novo asked the court to permanently halt Lilly’s advertising and require the drug company to issue corrective ads. Novo is also seeking financial damages, but the amount is unclear. The company also said it has warned Lilly that if the ads are not removed voluntarily, it plans to apply for a preliminary injunction in the coming days to immediately block them while the lawsuit proceeds.
Lilly said in a statement Tuesday that the company “stands firmly behind our advertising.” The company also said that “the gold standard for comparing medicines is a robustly designed and well-conducted head-to-head clinical trial, like the one we use in our advertising campaign to compare our obesity treatments Zepbound and Wegovy.” This remains the only study to directly compare these drugs.
“It’s true, it’s transparent, it’s based on the most direct scientific evidence available, and it’s exactly what patients deserve,” Lilly said. “We remain focused on the science and will vigorously defend this lawsuit.”
The lawsuit comes as Novo is waging an aggressive battle against Lilly to regain market share in the GLP-1 space, with new obesity drugs, strategic price cuts and new high-dose Wegoby positioned to compete with competitors’ top-selling obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes drug Munjaro.
In recent years, Lilly’s drugs have become the treatment of choice in this field for many healthcare providers and patients due to their high efficacy. However, high doses of Wegovy average about 19% weight loss, a direct answer to that.
“Old” trial issues
Novo said it is filing federal and state unfair competition and false advertising claims, including those under the Lanham Act, which drug companies have relied on in the past to hold competitors liable for false advertising.
The lawsuit alleges that Lilly’s campaigns through television and social media are harmful because consumers often rely on advertising to form their understanding of GLP-1, unlike medical professionals who have access to the full scientific evidence available.
“Lily’s advertising campaign deprives consumers of the true, current, and complete information they need to make informed decisions about available treatments,” the complaint said.
The complaint cites a television commercial that directly compares Zepbound and Wegovy, visually and verbally stating that patients taking Lilly’s drug lose an average of 50 pounds, compared to 33 pounds for Novo’s 2.4-milligram treatment. This is based on a previous head-to-head clinical study that compared the highest dose of Zepbound with 1.7 milligram and 2.4 milligram doses of Wegovy.
But Novo said in its complaint that more recent studies showed that a higher dose of 7.2 milligrams of Wigovy helped patients lose an average of 47 pounds, which is “clinically consistent” with Zepbound’s weight loss in Lilly’s most recent rigorous study of the drug.
Novo said Lilly acknowledged the existence of its high-dose Wegoby in a “small footnote” but called it “vague, confusing, virtually unreadable, and totally inadequate” because it didn’t convey that it was significantly more effective than the lower-dose drug.
In the lawsuit, Novo added that because there are no head-to-head studies comparing the highest doses of Wigovy and Zepbound currently available on the market, Lilly has “no basis for making a comparative claim” that its drug is more effective.
“While it may have been accurate to say 7.2 milligrams before it was available on Wegovy, it is no longer accurate,” Kuckelman said. “We believe they have a legal obligation, but more importantly, they have a responsibility to their patients to share accurate information.”
The lawsuit adds that Zepbound’s TV commercials have received more than 700 million impressions since they began airing around the end of April, illustrating the extent of the competitive harm to Novo.
The lawsuit alleges that Lilly takes a similar approach when comparing the effectiveness of Munjaro and Ozempic in its ads, withholding new data about the higher doses of Novo’s drug, which was approved more than four years ago.
“We feel we have very strong evidence here that we can show that Lilly did, in fact, mislead consumers with its advertising,” Kuckelman said.
