Company: DARE
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001401914-25-000012
Chunk: 254

Company: Dare Bioscience, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 254
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 be honored or may not effectively assign intellectual property rights to us. We have not entered into any non-compete agreements with any of our employees. We cannot guarantee that the confidential nature of our proprietary information will be maintained by our employees and others in the course of their future employment with or provision of services to a competitor. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or obtained and is using our know-how, trade secrets or other proprietary information is difficult, expensive and time consuming and the outcome is unpredictable. If we are unable to prevent unauthorized material disclosure of our intellectual property to third parties, we will not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage for the products we develop, which could materially adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.

Provisions in our agreements with governmental agencies and non-profit organizations may affect our intellectual property rights and the value of our development programs to our company.

Certain of our product development activities have been funded, are being funded and may in the future be funded, by the U.S. government and/or not-for-profit organizations. Our agreements for these sources of funding include, and may in the future include, terms and conditions that affect our intellectual property rights. For example, under our CRADA with NICHD for the Phase 3 clinical study of Ovaprene, the U.S. government has a nonexclusive, nontransferable, irrevocable, paid-up right to practice for research or other government purposes any invention of either party conceived or first actually reduced to practice in the party’s performance of the CRADA and both parties will jointly own inventions jointly invented by their employees in performing the research plan. Under the CRADA, we were granted an exclusive option to negotiate an exclusive or nonexclusive development and commercialization license with a field of use that does not exceed the scope of the research plan to rights that the U.S. government may have in inventions jointly or independently invented by NICHD employees for which a patent application is filed. Under our subaward agreement with VentureWell, the federal government has a nonexclusive license to obtain access to and to share research results and data, as well as certain rights, including “march-in” rights, in intellectual property conceived, made, created, developed or reduced to practice in our performance of the research activities and objectives relating to advancement of our DARE-HPV program specified in the subaward agreement, pursuant to and in accordance with the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. During the term of the subaward agreement and for three years thereafter,