Company: VERA
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029969
Chunk: 79

Company: Vera Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 79
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 obtain such a license, we could be precluded from commercializing any product candidates that were ultimately held to infringe such patents.

As the biotechnology industry expands and more patents are issued, the risk increases that atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop, may be subject to claims of infringement of the patent rights of third parties. Because patent applications are maintained as confidential for a certain period of time, until the relevant application is published, we may be unaware of third-party patents that may be infringed by commercialization of atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop, and we cannot be certain that we were the first to file a patent application related to a product candidate or technology. Moreover, because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications that may later result in issued patents that atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop may infringe. In addition, identification of third-party patent rights that may be relevant to our technology is difficult because patent searching is imperfect due to differences in terminology among patents, incomplete databases and the difficulty in assessing the meaning of patent claims. There is also no assurance that there is not prior art of which we are aware, but which we do not believe is relevant to our business, which may, nonetheless, ultimately be found to limit our ability to make, use, sell, offer for sale or import our products that may be approved in the future, or impair our competitive position. In addition, third parties may obtain patents in the future and claim that use of our technologies infringes upon these patents. Still further, we cannot rely on our experience that third parties have not so far alleged that we infringe their patent rights, as provisions of U.S. patent laws provide a safe harbor from patent infringement for therapeutic products under clinical development.

Any claims of patent infringement, misappropriation or other violations asserted by third parties would be time consuming and could:

•result in costly litigation that may cause negative publicity;

•divert the time and attention of our technical personnel and management;

•cause development delays;

•prevent us from commercializing atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop;

•require us to develop non-infringing technology, which may not be possible on a cost-effective basis;

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•subject us to significant liability to third parties