Company: IR
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-006391
Chunk: 161

Company: Ingersoll Rand Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 161
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 establish and protect our proprietary rights. Our nondisclosure agreements and confidentiality agreements may not effectively prevent disclosure of our proprietary information, technologies and processes, and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of breach of such agreements or unauthorized disclosure of such information, and if a competitor lawfully obtains or independently develops our trade secrets, we would have no right to prevent such competitor from using such technology or information to compete with us, either of which could harm our competitive position. Our applications for patent and tradename protection may not be granted, or the claims or scope of such issued patents or registered tradenames may not be sufficiently broad to protect our products. In addition, effective patent, copyright, tradename and trade secret protection may be unavailable or limited for some of our tradenames and patents in some foreign countries. We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and police our intellectual property rights, and we cannot guarantee that such efforts will be successful in preventing infringement or misappropriation. If we fail to successfully enforce these intellectual property rights, our competitive position could suffer, which could harm our operating results.

Although we make a significant effort to avoid infringing known proprietary rights of third parties, the steps we take to prevent misappropriation, infringement or other violation of the intellectual property of others may not be successful and from time to 

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time we may receive notice that a third party believes that our products may be infringing certain patents, tradenames or other proprietary rights of such third party. Responding to and defending such claims, regardless of their merit, can be costly and time-consuming, can divert management’s attention and other resources, and we may not prevail. Depending on the resolution of such claims, we may be barred from using a specific technology or other rights, may be required to redesign or re-engineer a product which may require significant resources, may be required to enter into licensing arrangements from the third party claiming infringement (which may not be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all), or may become liable for significant damages.

If any of the foregoing occurs, our ability to compete could be affected or our business, financial condition and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.

The loss of, or disruption in, our distribution network could have a negative impact on our abilities to ship products, meet customer demand and otherwise operate our business.

We sell a significant portion of our products through independent distributors and sales representatives. We rely in large part on the orderly operation of this distribution network, which depends on adherence to shipping schedules and effective management.