Company: OCEA
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001641172-25-003155
Chunk: 3399

Company: Ocean Biomedical, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 3399
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 preserve the confidentiality of our trade secrets,
and operate without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the valid and enforceable patents and proprietary rights of third
parties.

As
with other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, our ability to maintain and solidify our proprietary and intellectual property
position(s) for our product candidates and technologies will depend on our success in obtaining effective patent claims and enforcing
those claims if granted. However, our pending provisional and patent cooperation treaty, or PCT, patent applications, and any patent
applications that we may in the future file or license from third parties, may not result in the issuance of patents and any issued patents
we may obtain do not guarantee us the right to practice our technology in relation to the commercialization of our products. We also
cannot predict the breadth of claims that may be allowed or enforced in any patents we may own or in-license in the future.

Any
issued patents that we may own or in-license in the future may be challenged, invalidated, circumvented or have the scope of their claims
narrowed. For example, we cannot be certain of the priority of inventions covered by pending third-party patent applications. If third
parties prepare and file patent applications in the United States that also claim technology or therapeutics to which we have rights,
we may have to participate in interference proceedings in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, to determine priority
of invention, which could result in substantial costs to us, even if the eventual outcome is favorable to us, which is highly unpredictable.
In addition, because of the extensive time required for clinical development and regulatory review of a product candidate we may develop,
it is possible that, before any of our product candidates can be commercialized, any related patent may expire or remain in force for
only a short period following commercialization, thereby limiting the protection such patent would afford the respective product and
any competitive advantage such patent may provide.

37

The
term of individual patents depends upon the date of filing of the patent application, the date of patent issuance and the legal term
of patents in the countries in which they are obtained. In most countries, including the United States, the patent term is 20 years from
the earliest filing date of a non-provisional patent application. In the United States, a patent’s term may be lengthened by patent
term adjustment, which compensates a patentee for administrative delays by the USPTO in examining and granting a patent, or may be