Company: AWRE
Filing Date: 2025-03-13
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-038714
Chunk: 24

Company: AWARE INC /MA/
Filing Date: 2025-03-13
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 24
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 information and intellectual property; the loss of access to critical data or systems through ransomware, destructive attacks or other means; and business delays, service or system disruptions or denials of service.

If we or third parties with which we do business were to fall victim to successful cyber-attacks or experience other cybersecurity incidents, including the loss of individually identifiable customer or other sensitive data, we may incur substantial costs and suffer other negative consequences, which may include remediation costs, such as liability for stolen assets or information, repairs of system damage, and incentives to customers or business partners in an effort to maintain relationships after an attack as well as litigation and legal risks, including regulatory actions by state and federal regulators. 

Our intellectual property is subject to limited protection.

Because we are a technology provider, our ability to protect our intellectual property and to operate without infringing the intellectual property rights of others is critical to our success.  We regard our technology as proprietary.  We rely on a combination of U.S. and worldwide patent, trade secret, copyright, and trademark law as well as confidentiality agreements to protect our proprietary technology.  We cannot assure you that we will be able to enforce the patents we own against third parties. Some foreign countries do not currently provide effective legal protection for intellectual property and our ability to prevent the unauthorized use of our products in those countries is therefore limited. Despite our efforts, these measures can only provide limited protection. Unauthorized third parties may try to copy or reverse engineer portions of our products or otherwise obtain and use our intellectual property. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors may gain access to our technology, and our business would thus be harmed. 

In the future, we may be involved in legal action to enforce our intellectual property rights relating to our patents, copyrights or trade secrets.  Any such litigation could be costly and time-consuming for us, even if we were to prevail.  Moreover, even if we are successful in protecting our proprietary information, our competitors may independently develop technologies substantially equivalent or superior to our technology.  Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property or otherwise gaining access to our technology.  The misappropriation of our technology or the development of competitive technology could seriously harm our business.

We may be sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights. 

We may be subject to claims that our technology and products infringe the intellectual property rights of others.  A large and increasing number of participants in