Company: LGNZZ
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000886163-25-000012
Chunk: 59

Company: LIGAND PHARMACEUTICALS INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 59
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 review or interference. Any successful third party challenge to our patents in this or any other proceeding could result in the unenforceability or invalidity of such patents or amendment to our patents in such a way that any resulting protection may lead to increased competition to our business, which could harm our business. In addition, in patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity or unenforceability are commonplace. The outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability during patent litigation is unpredictable. If a defendant were to prevail on a legal assertion of invalidity or unenforceability, we would lose at least part, and perhaps all, of the patent protection on certain aspects of our platform technologies. In addition, if the breadth or strength of protection provided by our patents and patent applications is threatened, regardless of the outcome, it could dissuade companies from collaborating with us to license, develop or commercialize current or future products, platform and technology.

We may not be aware of all third party intellectual property rights potentially relating to our products, platform and technology. Publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until approximately 18 months after filing or, in some cases, not until such patent applications issue as patents. We or our licensors might not have been the first to make the inventions included in each of our pending patent applications and we or our licensors might not have been the first to file patent applications for these inventions. There is also no assurance that all of the potentially relevant prior art relating to our 

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patents and patent applications or licensed patents and patent applications has been found, which could be used by a third party to challenge their validity, or prevent a patent from issuing from a pending patent application. 

To determine the priority of these inventions, we may have to participate in interference proceedings (with respect to patent applications filed prior to March 2013), derivation proceedings or other post-grant proceedings declared by the USPTO that could result in substantial cost to us. The outcome of such proceedings is uncertain. No assurance can be given that other patent applications will not have priority over our patent applications. In addition, changes to the patent laws of the United States allow for various post-grant opposition proceedings that have not been extensively tested, and their outcome is therefore uncertain. Furthermore, if third parties bring these proceedings against our patents, we could experience significant costs and management distraction.

The validity, scope and enforceability of