it had sued Lilly<\/a>, arguing consumers were being misled about how the companies’ products compare, and that it would seek a preliminary injunction \u2060if \u200cthe\u00a0U.S. group did not voluntarily remove the disputed ads.<\/p>\nLilly\u00a0\u2060on Tuesday denied any wrongdoing, saying it stood by its advertising and would vigorously defend itself. The\u00a0U.S. drugmaker did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of regular office hours on Friday. <\/p>\n
Novo and\u00a0Lilly\u00a0are battling \u200cfor dominance in the obesity drug market, which analysts expect to be worth more than\u00a0$100 billion\u00a0by the end of the decade in\u00a0the United States\u00a0alone.<\/p>\n
Novo said \u200bin a statement on Friday that\u00a0Lilly’s ads were based on “outdated studies”, giving a false impression that the\u00a0U.S. firm’s drugs are vastly superior.<\/p>\n
“Novo Nordisk\u00a0is seeking a court order on an expedited basis to ensure people can access the accurate, complete picture \u2060of the treatments available to them today,” it said.<\/p>\n
Novo’s lawsuit alleges that\u00a0Lilly\u00a0violated false advertising and unfair competition \u200claws through its campaigns for obesity drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment \u200cMounjaro.<\/p>\n
Novo claimed\u00a0Lilly\u00a0compared the highest approved doses of Zepbound and Mounjaro with lower doses of Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic while omitting newer, higher-dose versions of Novo’s medicines that it says deliver greater weight loss.<\/p>\n
Novo’s lawsuit seeks \u2060a permanent injunction requiring\u00a0Lilly\u00a0to withdraw the campaigns and conduct corrective advertising.<\/p>\n
BMO analyst Evan \u2060Seigerman said the lawsuit was a way for Novo to try to \u2060change public perception of how the two companies’ drugs perform.<\/p>\n
“What it shows from my perspective is that Novo is taking a more aggressive stance in managing its \u200bbusiness, they’re not just going to let\u00a0Lilly\u00a0\u200csay whatever they want,” Seigerman said.<\/p>\n
Sven Borho, managing partner at Orbimed, said Novo should focus on its pipeline, adding that “Lilly\u00a0has been outcompeting them on the R&D front as well”.<\/p>\n
“Going to court is not going to help them in their marketing battle,” said Borho, whose firm manages the portfolio of\u00a0Lilly\u00a0shareholder\u00a0Worldwide Healthcare\u00a0\u200bTrust, which also owned a short-term position in \u200cNovo until May.<\/p>\n
![\"BMO's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/108339443-17848323821784832379-47344789610-1080pnbcnews.jpg\")
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk logos. Mike Blake | Tom Little | Reuters Novo Nordisk said on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[5544,13213,84,273,19330,102,13215,2960,27617,19331,13214,56,54,158,55,4405,23197],"class_list":["post-716957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-advertising","tag-biotech-and-pharmaceuticals","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-eli-lilly-and-co","tag-health","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-lawsuits","tag-novo-nordisk-a-s","tag-pharmaceuticals","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weight-loss","tag-weight-loss-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}