A US judge on Monday rejected Novo Nordisk's request to bar Eli Lilly from continuing to run weight-loss drug advertisements, which the Danish pharmaceutical company argued were false and misleading in a market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales.
US District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton, New Jersey, said Novo Nordisk should not receive a preliminary injunction because it failed to show that Eli Lilly's advertising threatened its sales, damaged its goodwill or caused lasting harm to its clinical reputation.
Quraishi called Novo Nordisk's claim of irreparable harm "insufficient to justify the extraordinary relief it seeks." The judge issued the ruling after a two-day hearing in late August.
Novo Nordisk sued Eli Lilly in July, claiming that advertisements for the weight-loss drug Zepbound and the diabetes treatment Mounjaro compared high doses of those products with low doses of Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Ozempic, in violation of federal and state false advertising and unfair competition laws.
One ad's voiceover claimed, accompanied by a written disclaimer, that people using Zepbound lost an average of 50 pounds (23 kilograms), while those using Wegovy lost an average of 33 pounds (15 kilograms).
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said in an email: "While we are disappointed with the court's ruling, today's decision does not determine whether Eli Lilly's advertising is false and misleading, and this litigation is still ongoing. Everyone should have access to clear, accurate and up-to-date information when making health decisions."
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly denied any wrongdoing and said it was pleased with the ruling.
Weight-loss drugs have become a major arena
Weight-loss drugs have become a significant business for major pharmaceutical companies. The United States is one of the few countries that allows prescription drugs to be advertised directly to consumers.
In a 25-page ruling, Quraishi said that although Novo Nordisk's witnesses were credible, Eli Lilly's advertising had at most a negligible effect on the market between April and July, and prescription volumes for Novo Nordisk's products remained stable.
The judge said monetary damages could compensate Novo Nordisk for any "non-trivial harm" it might suffer without an injunction. Quraishi also found that, based on "a very preliminary record," Novo Nordisk's case was "unpersuasive," though he did not rule on the merits of the case.
Court documents show that Novo Nordisk reported combined sales of about $32 billion in 2025 for its weight-loss drugs and Ozempic. The pharmaceutical company is striving to regain share in the US injectable weight-loss drug market, which is projected to exceed $100 billion by the end of this decade.
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