Company: HCWB
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DRS
Source: 0000950123-25-003769
Chunk: 68

Company: HCW Biologics Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DRS
Chunk 68
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 on our competitive position, business, financial conditions, results
of operations and prospects.

The USPTO and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural,
documentary, fee payment, and other provisions during the patent application process. There are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent
rights in the relevant jurisdiction. In such an event, competitors might be able to enter the market earlier than would otherwise have been the case. The standards applied by the USPTO, foreign patent offices, and patent courts or other authorities
in granting patents and ruling on claim scope and validity are not always applied uniformly or predictably. Patent positions of life sciences companies can be uncertain and involve complex factual, scientific, and legal questions. Changes in either
patent laws or their interpretation in any jurisdiction where we seek patent protection may diminish our ability to protect our inventions, maintain and enforce our intellectual property rights, and more generally may affect the value of our
intellectual property, including the narrowing of the scope of our patents and any that we may license.

Failure to protect or to obtain,
maintain or extend adequate patent and other intellectual property rights could materially adversely affect our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

We may become involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our issued patents relating to one or more of our product candidates or our internally-developed platform, which could ultimately render our patents invalid or unenforceable and adversely affect our competitive position. Intellectual property litigation or other legal proceedings could cause us to spend substantial resources and distract our personnel from their normal responsibilities.

Competitors may infringe our patents or other
intellectual property that relate to our immunotherapy platform technology and product candidates, their respective methods of use, manufacture, and formulations thereof. Third parties may in the future claim that our operations infringe their
intellectual property rights. To defend against such claims, protect our competitive position and counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may from time to time need to resort to litigation to enforce or defend any patents or other intellectual
property rights owned or licensed by us by filing infringement claims. We may be subject to further litigation in the future, involving claims that we have misappropriated or misused other parties’ trade secrets or information. To the extent we
gain greater market visibility, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims, which is not uncommon with respect to the biopharmaceutical industry.

As enforcement