Novo Nordisk class action alleges pay-for-delay scheme blocked generic Victoza

On March 5, 2026, a New York health benefit plan filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York against pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk Inc. and its Danish parent company, Novo Nordisk A/S, alleging an illegal scheme to block cheaper generic versions of the blockbuster diabetes drug Victoza from reaching patients.

The plaintiff is seeking to represent all health plans, insurers and individuals who indirectly paid for Victoza, generic liraglutide and/or Ozempic from Feb. 23, 2023, onward.

The group behind the lawsuit is the Uniformed Fire Officers Association Retired Officers Family Protection Plan. Based in New York, the plan provides prescription drug coverage to retired fire officers and their families. The plan says it paid inflated prices for Victoza and related drugs because Novo Nordisk blocked cheaper generic competition from reaching the market far longer than it should have.

Victoza contains an active ingredient called liraglutide that belongs to a class of medications known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which work by mimicking a natural hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels. The complaint notes that Victoza generated more than $5 billion in U.S. sales in 2018 alone, making it one of the most profitable drugs in the country at that time.

Alleged pay-for-delay and junk patents

The complaint accuses Novo Nordisk of using two separate strategies to keep generic Victoza off pharmacy shelves for more than a year longer than legally allowed.

The reverse-payment deal

When a generic drug company wants to sell a cheaper copy of a brand-name drug, it must file an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called an Abbreviated New Drug Application, or ANDA. Under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the federal law governing drug competition, the first company to file an ANDA earns the right to be the only generic seller on the market for 180 days before other generics can enter.

In January 2017, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries became the first company to file an ANDA for a generic version of Victoza. Novo Nordisk responded by suing Teva for patent infringement in March 2017. A trial was scheduled for March 2019.

The complaint alleges Novo Nordisk's patents were weak going into that trial. The key '833 patent, which covered certain peptide drug formulations, was allegedly invalid because it would have been obvious to a trained scientist or had already been described in prior published research.

The '893 patent, which covered an "Injection Button" on a drug delivery device, was allegedly not infringed by Teva's product at all because Teva's generic device contained no injection button.

Rather than go to trial and risk losing, the complaint says, Novo Nordisk and Teva settled their case on the courthouse steps. Under the deal, Teva agreed to stay off the market until June 2024.

In return for Teva's agreement to wait, the complaint alleges Novo Nordisk offered something enormously valuable: a promise not to launch its own competing "authorized generic" version of Victoza. An authorized generic is a copy of the brand-name drug, sometimes sold under a different label, that the brand company itself has approved for sale.

By agreeing not to launch one, Novo Nordisk allegedly handed Teva the chance to be the only generic on the market for 180 days, free of any competition from the brand company's own generic. The complaint describes this as a massive hidden payment worth hundreds of millions of dollars, because if Teva had simply won the patent litigation instead, Novo Nordisk could have launched its own authorized generic at the same time and split the market.

Because Teva chose not to launch its generic immediately after the settlement, it was effectively "parking" its 180-day exclusivity period. This created a legal bottleneck. Under FDA regulations, no other generic manufacturer could receive final approval until after Teva's exclusivity had run its course. That bottleneck proved to be a powerful tool.

Novo Nordisk then settled with each additional generic challenger that came along, one by one, the complaint alleges. According to the complaint, each deal helped preserve the bottleneck and protect Novo Nordisk's monopoly on Victoza.

Improper Orange Book patent listings

The second alleged strategy involves what the complaint calls improper listings in the FDA's "Orange Book." Under the Hatch-Waxman Act, brand-name drug companies are required to list their relevant patents in this federal database. When a generic company challenges one of those listed patents, a 30-month automatic delay in FDA approval kicks in. This mechanism gives brand-name companies powerful leverage to slow down generic competition.

The complaint alleges Novo Nordisk listed three patents in the Orange Book that had no business being there.

The Federal Trade Commission took action. In April 2024, the agency sent Novo Nordisk a warning letter stating that the '994 and '893 patents were improperly listed. The FTC sent a second warning in June 2024. At first, the complaint says, Novo Nordisk refused to act. Eventually, the company removed all three device patents from the Orange Book.

The complaint says that removal amounted to an acknowledgment that the listings were improper from the start.

What does the lawsuit seek?

The complaint alleges that without Novo Nordisk's alleged anticompetitive conduct, generic liraglutide would have entered the market on or around Feb. 23, 2023. That is when the last legitimate Victoza patent protection expired, including a six-month pediatric exclusivity extension. Instead, Teva did not launch its authorized generic until June 24, 2024, roughly 16 months later than the complaint says it should have.

During those 16 or more months of delayed generic entry, the complaint alleges Novo Nordisk took advantage of the situation by systematically shifting patients away from Victoza and toward its newer drug, Ozempic (semaglutide). Ozempic also belongs to the GLP-1 receptor agonist class but faces no imminent generic competition because its active ingredient patents have not yet expired.

This patient migration had major consequences, the complaint says. Generic liraglutide is not rated by the FDA as interchangeable with Ozempic. That means a pharmacist cannot automatically substitute a cheaper generic liraglutide product for a patient's Ozempic prescription at the pharmacy counter.

Every patient Novo Nordisk switched from Victoza to Ozempic before generic competition arrived was effectively locked out of the savings that generic drugs normally provide. Those patients were allegedly left paying Ozempic's full brand-name price with no affordable substitute available.

The numbers reflect the scale of the shift. According to the complaint, Victoza's U.S. sales fell from approximately $3.8 billion in 2022 to about $2 billion in the 12 months ending June 2024. Over that same period, Ozempic's U.S. sales climbed from nearly $19 billion in 2022 to more than $44 billion in 2024. As Bloomberg Law reported, the suit accuses Novo Nordisk of using the delay period to move its patient base to a drug that cannot be undercut by generics.

The complaint brings four legal claims.

1. Monopolization under the antitrust laws of 29 states and other jurisdictions.
2. Unfair or deceptive trade practices under the consumer protection laws of seven states.
3. Unjust enrichment under the laws of approximately 30 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
4. Federal antitrust claim under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, asking the court to issue a permanent order stopping the anticompetitive conduct.

The plaintiff is asking for treble damages, which means three times the actual harm caused, as well as disgorgement of profits, restitution, a constructive trust over money allegedly wrongfully obtained, a permanent injunction, attorneys' fees and court costs.

The proposed class includes all end payors who indirectly purchased Victoza, AB-rated generic liraglutide and/or Ozempic, other than for resale, from Feb. 23, 2023, through the end of the period affected by the alleged anticompetitive conduct.