Company: SNWV
Filing Date: 2025-03-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-014141
Chunk: 61

Company: SANUWAVE Health, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 61
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 the scope of our patent protection.

We also rely upon trade secrets and unpatented proprietary know-how and continuing technological innovation in developing our products, especially where we do not believe patent protection is appropriate or obtainable. We seek to protect this intellectual property, in part, by generally requiring our employees, consultants, and current and prospective business partners to enter into confidentiality agreements in connection with their employment, consulting or advisory relationships with us, where appropriate. We also require our employees, consultants, researchers, and advisors who we expect to work on our products to agree to disclose and assign to us all inventions conceived during the workday, developed using our property or which relate to our business. We may lack the financial or other resources to successfully monitor and detect, or to enforce our rights in respect of, infringement or breaches of these confidentiality agreements. In the case of any such undetected or unchallenged infringements or breaches, these confidentiality agreements may not provide us with meaningful protection of our trade secrets and unpatented proprietary know-how or adequate remedies. In addition, others may independently develop technology that is similar or equivalent to our trade secrets or know-how. If any of our trade secrets, unpatented know-how or other confidential or proprietary information is divulged to third parties, including our competitors, our competitive position in the marketplace could be harmed and our ability to sell our products successfully could be severely compromised. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally obtained and is using trade secrets that have been licensed to us or that we own is also difficult, expensive and time consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, courts outside the United States may be less willing to protect trade secrets. Costly and time-consuming litigation could be necessary to seek to enforce and determine the scope of our proprietary rights, and failure to obtain or maintain trade secret protection could have a material adverse effect on our business. Moreover, some of our academic institution licensees, evaluators, collaborators, and scientific advisors have rights to publish data and information to which we have rights. If we cannot maintain the confidentiality of our technologies and other confidential information in 

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connection with our collaborations, our ability to protect our proprietary information or obtain patent protection in the future may be impaired, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.

Accordingly, we may fail to secure meaningful patent protection relating to any of our existing or future products or discoveries despite the expenditure of considerable resources. Further, there may be widespread patent infringement in countries in which we may seek patent protection, including countries in