Company: ALGN
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001097149-25-000012
Chunk: 30

Company: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 30
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 professional marketing and education programs. Additionally, our consumer marketing programs are designed to create awareness and educate consumers on the benefits of Invisalign treatment and Vivera retainers, including where they can find trained doctors to provide treatment.

We provide training, marketing and clinical support to orthodontists and GPs. As of December 31, 2024, we had approximately 130,370 active Invisalign-trained doctors. We define doctors as active if they have submitted at least one Invisalign case in the prior 12-month period.

Research and Development

We are committed to investing in world-class digital technology development, which we believe is critical to achieving our goal of establishing the Invisalign System as the standard method for treating malocclusion, our iTero intraoral scanners as the preferred scanning technology for digital dental scans, and our exocad CAD/CAM software as the solution of choice for dental labs.

Our research and development activities are directed toward developing digital technology innovations that we believe will deliver our next generation of products and solutions as part of the AlignTM Digital Platform. These activities range from accelerating product and clinical innovation, to developing manufacturing process improvements, to researching future technologies, products and software.

In an effort to demonstrate the broad treatment capabilities of the Invisalign System, more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and various clinical case studies and articles have been published that highlight the clinical applicability of Invisalign treatment to malocclusion cases, including addressing malocclusions of severe complexity. Similarly, various studies have also been published demonstrating the capabilities of our scanners, including advanced features such as our NIRI technology. We undertake pre-commercialization trials and testing of our technological improvements to our products and manufacturing process. We furthermore fund research in the field of orthodontics and dentistry through initiatives such as our 

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Annual Research Award Program, which was in its 15th year in 2024 and donations to the American Association of Orthodontists Foundation. 

Intellectual Property 

We believe our intellectual property portfolio represents a substantial business advantage. As of December 31, 2024, we had 1,000 active U.S. patents, 1,063 active foreign patents, and 1,012 pending global patent applications. Our active U.S. patents expire between 2025 and 2043. When patents expire, we lose the protection and competitive advantages they provide, which could negatively impact our operating results; however, as we continue to pursue new innovations, we seek intellectual property protection