Company: XERI
Filing Date: 2025-10-02
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001477932-25-007303
Chunk: 143

Company: XERIANT, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-10-02
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 143
---
 develop or obtain non-infringing technology, fail to defend an infringement action successfully or have infringed patents declared invalid or unenforceable, we may incur substantial monetary damages, encounter significant delays in bringing our product candidates to market and be precluded from manufacturing or selling our product candidates.

 19Table of Contents

We cannot be certain that others have not filed patent applications for technology covered by our pending applications, or that we were the first to invent the technology, because:

 ●some patent applications in the United States may be maintained in secrecy until the patents are issued;    ●patent applications in the United States are typically not published until 18 months after the priority date; and    ●publications in scientific literature often lag behind actual discoveries.

Our competitors may have filed, and may in the future file, patent applications covering technology similar to ours. Any such patent applications may have priority over our patent applications, which could further require us to obtain rights to issued patents covering such technologies. If another party has filed US patent applications on inventions similar to ours that claims priority to any applications filed prior to the priority dates of our applications, we may have to participate in an interference proceeding declared or a derivation proceed instituted by the USPTO to determine priority of invention in the United States. The costs of these proceedings could be substantial, and it is possible that such efforts would be unsuccessful if, unbeknownst to us, the other party had independently arrived at the same or similar inventions prior to our own inventions, resulting in a loss of our U.S. patent position with respect to such inventions. Other countries have similar laws that permit secrecy of patent applications, and thus the third party’s patent or patent application may be entitled to priority over our applications in such jurisdictions.

Some of our competitors may be able to sustain the costs of complex patent litigation more effectively than we can because they have substantially greater resources. In addition, any uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of any litigation could have a material adverse effect on our ability to raise the funds necessary to continue our operations.

We may be subject to claims that our employees, consultants or independent contractors have wrongfully used or disclosed alleged trade secrets.

As is common in the aerospace and technology industries, we may employ individuals who were previously employed at aerospace and technology companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Although we try to ensure that our employees, consultants and independent contractors do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or