BioMarin will take a fifth of every dollar Ascendis earns from Yuviwel in the United States, and in exchange it drops an ITC case and litigation on three continents

Every dollar of Yuviwel sold in the United States now carries a payment to the company that makes its closest rival.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical told the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that it signed a binding term sheet with Ascendis Pharma A/S on Saturday. Ascendis gets a non-exclusive, worldwide, transferable licence to the BioMarin patents covering the C-type natriuretic peptide sold as Yuviwel and known in development as TransCon CNP or navepegritide. BioMarin gets 20 percent of annual net sales in the United States and 18 percent in the European Union, Brazil and South Korea, in each case from the first commercial sale in that territory, running until May 2030.

The United States royalty applies retroactively.

What stops

The litigation stops everywhere at once. BioMarin will dismiss its Section 337 investigation at the International Trade Commission, and the press release attached to the filing lists the rest: Brazil, Denmark, Germany, South Korea, and the Northern District of California. All pending litigation between the two companies relating to the patents is dismissed with prejudice.

Nothing in either document is a finding. There is no verdict, no exclusion order, and no determination that anything infringed. What the term sheet contains instead is a release by BioMarin of infringement claims arising before Saturday, a covenant by BioMarin not to sue, a covenant by Ascendis not to challenge the patents, and a mutual clause under which neither side interferes with the other's regulatory business.

The licence is broad on purpose

It covers all current and potential indications, achondroplasia and hypochondroplasia named among them, and it covers use of Yuviwel in combination with other medicines. That breadth is the price of the royalty rate. Ascendis is buying the freedom to develop the drug in directions it has not announced, and BioMarin is pricing that freedom at a fifth of the American revenue rather than trying to hold the market for VOXZOGO, its own vosoritide product, by injunction.

What the document will not tell you

There is not a single dollar figure in it. No Yuviwel sales, no upfront payment, no estimate of what 20 percent is worth, and no VOXZOGO comparison. The royalty runs to May 2030 and the filing does not say what happens after that date.

The term sheet is also not the contract. The two companies have agreed to negotiate a definitive settlement and license agreement in good faith, and the filing sets 24 September 2026 as the point at which, if they have not executed one, every provision of the term sheet simply continues to bind them anyway. That construction is unusual enough to be worth noting: the deadline has no teeth, because failing it changes nothing.

Alexander Hardy, BioMarin's president and chief executive, is quoted in the release saying the outcome incentivizes companies like BioMarin to keep investing in long-term innovation. Ascendis is not quoted in it.