Company: PHAT
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-034183
Chunk: 196

Company: Phathom Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 196
---
 either an injunction prohibiting our sales, or, with respect to our sales, an obligation on our part to pay royalties and/or other forms of compensation.

Licensing of intellectual property is of critical importance to our business and involves complex legal, business and scientific issues. Disputes may arise between us and our licensors regarding intellectual property subject to a license agreement, including:

•the scope of rights granted under the license agreement and other interpretation-related issues;

84

•whether and the extent to which our technology and processes infringe on intellectual property of the licensor that is not subject to the licensing agreement;

•our right to sublicense patents and other rights to third parties;

•our diligence obligations with respect to the use of the licensed technology in relation to our development and commercialization of vonoprazan and any future product candidates, and what activities satisfy those diligence obligations;

•our right to transfer or assign the license; and

•the ownership of inventions and know-how resulting from the joint creation or use of intellectual property by our licensors and us and our partners.

If disputes over intellectual property that we have licensed prevent or impair our ability to maintain our current licensing arrangements on acceptable terms, we may not be able to successfully develop and commercialize the affected product candidates, which would have a material adverse effect on our business.

In addition, certain of our agreements may limit or delay our ability to consummate certain transactions, may impact the value of those transactions, or may limit our ability to pursue certain activities. For example, if we choose to sublicense or assign to any third parties our rights under our existing license agreement with Takeda with respect to any licensed product, we may be required to wait for a certain period or until the occurrence of certain funding or development milestones.

If the scope of any patent protection or non-patent regulatory exclusivity we obtain is not sufficiently broad, or if we lose or fail to obtain any of our patent protection or non-patent regulatory exclusivity, our ability to prevent our competitors from commercializing similar or identical product candidates would be adversely affected.

The patent position of biopharmaceutical companies generally is highly uncertain, involves complex legal and factual questions, and has been the subject of much litigation in recent years. As a result, the issuance, scope, validity, enforceability and commercial value of our patent rights are highly uncertain. Our in-licensed pending and future patent applications may not result in patents being issued which protect vonoprazan or any future product candidates or which effectively prevent others from commercializing competitive product candidates.