Company: VRCA
Filing Date: 2025-03-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-037172
Chunk: 93

Company: Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 93
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 remedies for any breach. Also, if the steps taken to maintain our trade secrets are deemed inadequate, we may have insufficient recourse against third parties for misappropriating the trade secret. In addition, others may independently discover our trade secrets and proprietary information. The FDA has recently made changes to its rules that may make it harder for the FDA to withhold information from the public and may require the FDA to make certain information publicly accessible, and it is not clear how these new rules will be interpreted. If we are unable to prevent material disclosure of the non-patented intellectual property related to our technologies to third parties, and there is no guarantee that we will have any such enforceable trade secret protection, we may not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage in our market, which could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We may enjoy only limited geographical protection with respect to certain patents and we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights throughout the world.

Filing and prosecuting patent applications and defending patents covering YCANTH (VP-102) and our other product candidates in all countries throughout the world would be prohibitively expensive. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and, further, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where we have patent protection, but enforcement rights are not as strong as that in the United States or Europe. These products may compete with YCANTH (VP-102) or our other product candidates, and our current and future patents or other intellectual property rights may not be effective or sufficient to prevent them from competing.

In addition, we may decide to abandon national and regional patent applications before grant. The examination of each national or regional patent application is an independent proceeding. As a result, patent applications in the same family may issue as patents in some jurisdictions, such as in the United States, but may issue as patents with claims of different scope or may even be refused in other jurisdictions. It is also quite common that depending on the country, the scope of patent protection may vary for the same product, product candidate, or technology.

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While we intend to protect our intellectual property rights in our expected significant markets, we cannot ensure that we will be able to initiate or maintain similar efforts in all jurisdictions in which we may wish to market YCANTH (VP-102) or our other product candidates. Accordingly, our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights in such countries may be inadequate, which may have an