Source: Fortune
The obesity rate's decline—driven by GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic—is creating pressure to rethink how pharmaceutical patents work when they genuinely shift public health outcomes. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly's dominance in GLP-1s may face legal or regulatory challenges as governments and competitors question whether patent protections are justified when the drugs address a crisis affecting 100+ million Americans. The core question: does the current patent system adequately balance innovation incentives against population health needs when a single drug class becomes the primary solution to a decades-long epidemic.