Company: CRNX
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029050
Chunk: 200

Company: Crinetics Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 200
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 patent position of biopharmaceutical companies is generally 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 pending and future patent applications may not result in patents being issued that adequately protect our product candidates or that effectively prevent others from commercializing competitive product candidates. 

Moreover, the coverage claimed in a patent application can be significantly reduced before the patent is issued, and its scope can be reinterpreted after issuance. Even if patent applications we own currently or in the future issue as patents, they may not issue in a form that will provide us with any meaningful protection, prevent competitors or other third parties from competing with us, or otherwise provide us with any competitive advantage. Any issued patents that we own may be challenged or circumvented by third parties or may be narrowed or invalidated as a result of challenges by third parties. Consequently, we do not know whether our product candidates will be protectable or remain protected by valid and enforceable patents. Our competitors or other third parties may be able to circumvent our patents by developing similar or alternative technologies or products in a non-infringing manner which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. 

The issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability. Our patents may be challenged in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad and may be narrowed or invalidated as a result of challenges by third parties. We may be subject to a third-party pre-issuance submission of prior art to the USPTO, or become involved in opposition, derivation, revocation, reexamination, post-grant review, or PGR, and inter partes review, or IPR, or other similar proceedings challenging our owned patent rights. An adverse determination in any such submission, proceeding or litigation could reduce the scope of, or invalidate or render unenforceable, our patent rights, allow third parties to commercialize our product candidates and compete directly with us, without payment to us, or result in our inability to 

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manufacture or commercialize products without infringing third-party patent rights. Moreover, our patents may become subject to post-grant challenge proceedings, such as oppositions in a foreign patent office, which challenge our priority of invention or other features of patentability with respect to our patents and patent applications. Such challenges may result in loss