A $250 mistake seems set to cost Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk billions
Canada will get generic versions of the weight loss drug starting next year, all because the Danish pharmaceutical giant didn't pay a patent maintenance fee
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Novo Nordisk is set to lose billions in profit in the coming years, all because it didn’t pay a bill for a few hundred dollars.
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According to Science columnist Derek Lowe, the Ozempic and Wegovy maker made a costly mistake in Canada, where generic versions of its drugs are set to hit the market next year.
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According to Lowe, Novo Nordisk did file a patent for semaglutide, the main component of their weight-loss and diabetes medicine, but failed to pay the annual maintenance fee on the patent.
Lowe unearthed a letter where the Danish company’s lawyers even asked for a refund in 2017 for its $250 maintenance fee because the company, now worth more than $350 billion, wasn’t sure if it wanted to pay it.
In 2019, the Canadian patent office sent Novo Nordisk a letter saying it hadn’t received their fee, and that it was now $450. Lowe discovered that ultimately the company never paid the maintenance fee, even within the one-year grace period, paving the way for the patent to lapse. Canadians' ability to get generic versions of the drugs starting in 2026 could cost the company a few billion dollars in profits, according to some projections.
The Canadian kerfuffle comes amid tough times for Novo Nordisk, which, until quite recently, had been virtually synonymous with a booming weight loss drug market that could hit $139 billion by 2030.
The company has struggled to meet surging demand, ceding ground to both its Big Pharma rival Eli Lilly, and to smaller firms making compounded versions of weight loss drugs. Its pipeline of next-generation weight loss drugs has underwhelmed. And after the stock fell 50% in a year, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen resigned earlier this month.
—Harri Weber contributed to this article.