Company: VCYT
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001384101-25-000014
Chunk: 100

Company: VERACYTE, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 100
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 apply for patents covering our products, services and technologies and uses thereof, as we deem appropriate; however, we may fail to apply for patents on important products, services or technologies in a timely fashion or at all, or we may fail to apply for patents in potentially relevant jurisdictions. Both the patent application process and the process of managing patents can be time consuming and expensive. If we fail to protect our intellectual property, third parties may be able to compete more effectively against us and we may incur substantial litigation costs in our attempts to recover or restrict use of our intellectual property.

It is possible that none of our pending patent applications will result in issued patents in a timely fashion or at all. Even if patents are granted, they may not provide a basis for intellectual property protection of commercially viable products or may 

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not provide us with any competitive advantages. It is possible that others will design around our current or future patented technologies. 

The patent positions of life sciences companies can be highly uncertain and involve complex legal and factual questions for which important legal principles remain unresolved. We cannot predict the breadth of claims that may be allowed in or enforced in our patents or in third-party patents in the United States or elsewhere. Courts frequently render opinions in the biotechnology field that may affect the patentability of certain inventions or discoveries, including opinions that may affect the patentability of methods for analyzing or comparing nucleic acids.

In particular, the patent positions of companies engaged in the development and commercialization of genomic diagnostic tests, like our current tests and products, may be particularly uncertain. Various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have rendered decisions that affect the scope of patentability of certain inventions or discoveries relating to certain diagnostic tests and related methods. These decisions state, among other things, that patent claims that recite laws of nature (for example, the relationship between blood levels of certain metabolites and the likelihood that a dosage of a specific drug will be ineffective or cause harm) are not themselves patent eligible subject matter. What constitutes a law of nature is uncertain, and it is possible that certain aspects of genomic diagnostics tests would be considered natural laws. Accordingly, the evolving case law in the United States may adversely affect our ability to obtain patents and may facilitate third-party challenges to any owned and licensed patents.

The laws of some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and we may encounter difficulties protecting and defending such rights in foreign jurisdictions. The legal systems of many other countries do not favor the enforcement of patents and