A Blank Rome team secured a significant victory for a telehealth platform in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, when a federal judge granted our telehealth client’s motion to dismiss all claims brought by a pharmaceutical manufacturer of a GLP-1 medication.
The manufacturer of the FDA-approved GLP-1 medicine filed suit against a telehealth platform that offers compounded semaglutide products, asserting Lanham Act false advertising claims. The pharmaceutical plaintiff contended that the telehealth platform’s marketing of compounded medications as “personalized” and “tailored” to individual patients was false and misleading.
Dismissing all of the claims, the court ruled that the plaintiff lacked both Article III standing and statutory standing under the Lanham Act. On the question of Article III standing, the Court found that the plaintiff failed to plausibly allege an injury in fact, holding that the complaint did not set forth facts supporting an inference of reputational harm or patient diversion attributable to the telehealth platform’s use of the term “personalized.” The Court noted that the existence of compounded medications does not, in itself, plausibly support harm to the reputation of an FDA-approved drug manufacturer, and that the plaintiff failed to allege that any of the telehealth platform’s customers were harmed by the compounded medication in a manner that would lead to unwarranted conclusions about the safety or efficacy of the FDA-approved products.
Even assuming Article III standing could be established, the Court further concluded that the plaintiff could not establish statutory standing under the Lanham Act’s heightened requirements, which demand both an injury to a commercial interest in reputation or sales and a showing that the injury flows directly from the defendant’s deceptive advertising. The Court emphasized that because the medications at issue are prescription drugs, a physician's prescribing decision, not the telehealth platform’s advertisements, is the proximate cause of any patient choosing a compounded product over the plaintiff’s FDA-approved medicines.
As a result of the ruling, the entire complaint was dismissed. Despite the court’s permission for the plaintiff to replead, the plaintiff elected to drop the case entirely.
The Blank Rome team was led by Rachael G. Pontikes and Shannon E. McClure, with support from Emily L. Hussey, Michael F. Reeder, Ann E. Querns, P. Gavin Eastgate, Susan J. Dewey, Amica J. Nesbitt, Garrison B. Ambrose, Sabrina M. Rubis, and Brenda Kruger.