U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi ruled on Monday that Novo Nordisk had failed to prove its case for a preliminary injunction against Eli Lilly’s advertising campaign, BioPharma Dive reported. Novo, which sued Lilly in July, argued the ads used outdated studies comparing higher doses of Lilly’s medicines with lower doses of its own and did not account for a more recently approved higher dose form of Wegovy; the judge found that Wegovy prescription volume did not fall while the commercials aired from April to July and that the ads acknowledged the higher dose product.
A Novo spokesperson said the ruling did not decide whether Lilly’s advertising is false and misleading and does not constitute a final resolution of the merits of the company’s false advertising claims. The judge also criticized Novo’s own advertising for Ozempic, which claimed head to head superiority over Lilly’s Trulicity without revealing the availability of a higher dose version.