Company: DRTSW
Filing Date: 2025-03-12
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001213900-25-023187
Chunk: 71

Company: Alpha Tau Medical Ltd.
Filing Date: 2025-03-12
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 3
Chunk 71
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 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (the Leahy-Smith Act), signed into law on September 16, 2011, could increase
those uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents.
The Leahy-Smith Act includes a number of significant changes to U. S. patent law. These include provisions that affect the way patent applications
are prosecuted, redefine prior art and provide more efficient and cost-effective avenues for competitors to challenge the validity of
patents. These include allowing third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO during patent prosecution and additional procedures to
attack the validity of a patent by USPTO administered post-grant proceedings, including post-grant review, inter partesreview,
and derivation proceedings. Further, because of a lower evidentiary standard in these USPTO post-grant proceedings compared to the evidentiary
standard in United States federal courts necessary to invalidate a patent claim, a third party could potentially provide evidence in a
USPTO proceeding sufficient for the USPTO to hold a claim invalid even though the same evidence would be insufficient to invalidate the
claim if first presented in a district court action. Accordingly, a third party may attempt to use the USPTO procedures to invalidate
our patent claims that would not have been invalidated if first challenged by the third party as a defendant in a district court action.
Thus, the Leahy-Smith Act and its implementation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our patent
applications and the enforcement or defense of our issued patents, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business,
financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

After March 2013, under the
Leahy-Smith Act, the United States transitioned to a first inventor to file system in which, assuming that the other statutory requirements
are met, the first inventor to file a patent application will be entitled to the patent on an invention regardless of whether a third-party
was the first to invent the claimed invention. A third party that files a patent application in the USPTO after March 2013, but before
we file an application covering the same invention, could therefore be awarded a patent covering an invention of ours even if we had made
the invention before it was made by such third party. This will require us to be cognizant going forward of the time from invention to
filing of a patent application. Since patent applications in the United States and most other countries are confidential for a