Company: CDT
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001641172-25-001246
Chunk: 31

Company: CDT Equity Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 31
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48

In
addition, there may be issued patents of third parties that are infringed or are alleged to be infringed by our clinical assets or proprietary
technologies. We cannot be certain that others have not filed patent applications for technology covered by our own and in-licensed issued
patents or our pending applications because some patent applications in the U.S. may be maintained in secrecy until the patents are issued,
patent applications in the U.S. and many foreign jurisdictions are typically not published until eighteen months after filing, and publications
in the scientific literature often lag behind actual discoveries. Our competitors may have filed, and may in the future file, patent
applications covering our clinical assets or technology similar to ours. Any such patent application may have priority over our own and
in-licensed patent applications or patents, which could further require us to obtain rights to issued patents covering such technologies.
If another party has filed a U.S. patent application on inventions similar to those owned or in-licensed to us, we or, in the case of
in-licensed technology, the licensor may have to participate, in the U.S., in an interference proceeding to determine priority of invention.

We
may be exposed to, or threatened with, future litigation by third parties having patent or other intellectual property rights alleging
that our clinical assets or proprietary technologies infringe such third parties’ intellectual property rights, including litigation.
These lawsuits could claim that there are existing patent rights for such drug and this type of litigation can be costly and could adversely
affect our operating results and divert the attention of managerial and technical personnel, even if we do not infringe such patents
or the patents asserted against us are ultimately established as invalid. There is a risk that a court would decide that we are infringing
the third party’s patents and would order us to stop the activities covered by the patents. In addition, there is a risk that a
court will order us to pay the other party damages for having violated the other party’s patents.

As
a result of patent infringement claims, or to avoid potential claims, we may choose or be required to seek licenses from third parties.
These licenses may not be available on commercially acceptable terms, or at all. Even if we are able to obtain a license, the license
would likely obligate us to pay license fees or royalties or both, and the rights granted to us might be nonexclusive, which could result
in our competitors gaining access to the same intellectual property, or such rights might be restrictive