Company: VERA
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029969
Chunk: 71

Company: Vera Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 71
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 of these parties may breach such agreements and disclose such output before a patent application is filed, thereby jeopardizing our ability to seek patent protection. Further, although we require our employees, commercial contractors, and certain consultants and investigators to enter into invention assignment agreements that grant us ownership of any discoveries or inventions made by them while in our employ, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party, we cannot provide any assurances that all such agreements have been duly executed, and any of these 

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parties may breach such agreements and claim ownership in intellectual property that we believe is owned or in-licensed by us. In addition, publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries, and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain that we were the first to make the inventions claimed in our owned or any licensed patents or pending patent applications, or that we were the first to file for patent protection of such inventions.

Given the amount of time required for the development, testing and regulatory review of new product candidates, patents protecting such candidates might expire before or shortly after such candidates are commercialized. As a result, our intellectual property may not provide us with sufficient rights to exclude others from commercializing products similar or identical to ours. Should any of the above events occur, it could significantly harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

If we breach our license agreement with Ares, an affiliate of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, related to atacicept, the license agreement with Novartis related to MAU868, or the license agreement with Stanford related to VT-109, we could lose the ability to continue the development and commercialization of atacicept, MAU868, or VT-109, respectively.

We are dependent on patents, know-how and proprietary technology licensed or sublicensed to us from Ares, Novartis, and Stanford. Our commercial success depends upon our ability to develop, manufacture, market and sell our product candidates and use our and our licensor’s proprietary technologies without infringing the proprietary rights of third parties. Ares, Novartis, or Stanford may have the right to terminate the applicable license agreement in full in the event we materially breach or default in the performance of any of the obligations under the applicable license agreement. A termination of any of our existing license agreements could result in the loss of significant