Company: APPN
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001441683-25-000017
Chunk: 49

Company: APPIAN CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 49
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 or in an embargoed country despite such precautions. Any such shipment could have negative consequences, including government investigations, penalties, and reputational harm.

Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property

Any failure to protect our proprietary technology and intellectual property rights could substantially harm our business and operating results.

Our success and ability to compete depend in part on our ability to protect our proprietary technology and intellectual property. To safeguard these rights, we rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret laws and contractual protections in the United States and other jurisdictions, all of which provide only limited protection and may not now or in the future provide us with a competitive advantage.

As of December 31, 2024, we had 21 issued patents and 20 pending patent applications related to our platform and its technology. We have registered the “Appian” name and logo in the United States and certain other countries. We have registrations and/or pending applications for additional marks in the United States. We cannot 

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provide assurance any current or future applications for registrations for patent or trademark applications will result in the grant of any valid, enforceable intellectual property rights. Further, we cannot provide assurance any granted patent or trademark will provide the protection we seek, will be valid if challenged, or will be sufficiently broad in actions against alleged infringers. Moreover, any of our granted intellectual property rights may be rendered invalid by future changes in the law, defects in our prosecution processes, or preexisting technology, rights, or marks. 

In order to protect our unpatented proprietary technologies and processes, we rely on trade secret laws and confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, strategic partners, vendors, and others. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary technology and trade secrets, unauthorized parties may attempt to misappropriate, copy, reverse engineer, or otherwise obtain and use them. In addition, others may independently discover our trade secrets, in which case we would not be able to assert trade secret rights or develop similar technologies and processes. Further, the contractual provisions we enter into may not prevent unauthorized use or disclosure of our proprietary technology or intellectual property rights and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of any such unauthorized use or disclosure. 

Policing unauthorized use of our technologies, trade secrets, and intellectual property is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, particularly in foreign countries where the laws may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States and where mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be weak. To the extent we expand