Company: DARE
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form Type: ARS
Source: 0001401914-25-000018
Chunk: 197

Company: Dare Bioscience, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form: ARS
Chunk 197
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 with us. If any of our trade secrets were to be disclosed to or independently developed by a competitor, our competitive position could be harmed. 99

Confidentiality agreements with employees and others may not adequately prevent disclosure of our know- how, trade secrets and other proprietary information and may not adequately protect our intellectual property, which could limit our ability to compete. We enter into confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with our employees, CROs, CMOs, consultants, collaborators, sponsored researchers, and scientific and other advisors. These agreements generally require that the other party keep confidential and not disclose to third parties all confidential information developed by the party on our behalf or made known to the party by us during the course of the party’s relationship with us. We also enter into intellectual property assignment agreements with our employees, consultants and certain other service providers, which generally provide that inventions conceived by the party in the course of rendering services to us will be our exclusive property. However, these agreements may not be honored or may not effectively assign intellectual property rights to us. We have not entered into any non-compete agreements with any of our employees. We cannot guarantee that the confidential nature of our proprietary information will be maintained by our employees and others in the course of their future employment with or provision of services to a competitor. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or obtained and is using our know-how, trade secrets or other proprietary information is difficult, expensive and time consuming and the outcome is unpredictable. If we are unable to prevent unauthorized material disclosure of our intellectual property to third parties, we will not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage for the products we develop, which could materially adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition. Provisions in our agreements with governmental agencies and non-profit organizations may affect our intellectual property rights and the value of our development programs to our company. Certain of our product development activities have been funded, are being funded and may in the future be funded, by the U.S. government and/or not-for-profit organizations. Our agreements for these sources of funding include, and may in the future include, terms and conditions that affect our intellectual property rights. For example, under our CRADA with NICHD for the Phase 3 clinical study of Ovaprene, the U.S. government has a nonexclusive, nontransferable, irrevocable, paid-up right to practice for research or other government purposes any invention of either party conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the party’s performance of the CR