Cyberonics on Tuesday entered into an agreement with Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, granting exclusive rights to Cyberonics’ patents and patent applications pertaining to vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) for the treatment of obesity and two related co-morbidities, diabetes and hypertension, in overweight patients.

Ethicon has agreed to pay Cyberonics a signing fee of $9.5 million and royalties on commercial sales of products covered by the subject patents, the Houston-based Cyberonics said.

Dan Moore, president and CEO of Cyberonics, said, that licensing out its “obesity-related patents permits us to obtain value from these assets while we continue to focus on our other strategic objectives—achieving positive cash flow and profitability, growing our core epilepsy business, and appropriately developing our treatment-resistant depression business.”