A federal judge on Oct. 26 declined Novo Nordisk’s request to block pharmaceutical rival Eli Lilly from continuing advertisements for weight-loss drugs that the Danish drugmaker claims are false and misleading, affecting markets with tens of billions of dollars of annual sales.
Judge Zahid Quraishi of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in Trenton said Novo Nordisk’s claim did not merit a preliminary injunction, having failed to show that Lilly’s ads threatened sales, undermined its goodwill, or caused lasting damage to its clinical reputation.
The judge made his ruling after a two-day hearing in late August, finding Novo Nordisk’s claim of irreparable harm “inadequate to warrant the extraordinary relief it seeks.” …