Company: PRME
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-008884
Chunk: 150

Company: Prime Medicine, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 150
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, or threatened with, adversarial proceedings or litigation regarding intellectual property rights with respect to our Prime Editing and PASSIGE technologies and product candidates we may develop, including interference proceedings, post-grant review, inter partes review, derivation proceedings and reexamination proceedings before the USPTO and similar proceedings in foreign jurisdictions such as oppositions before the European Patent Office, or EPO. Numerous U.S. and foreign issued patents and pending patent applications that are owned by third parties exist in the fields in which we are developing our product candidates and they may assert infringement claims against us based on existing patents or patents that may be granted in the future, regardless of their merit.

As the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries expand and more patents are issued, the risk increases that our Prime Editing technology and product candidates may give rise to claims of infringement of the patent rights of 

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others. Moreover, it is not always clear to industry participants, including us, which patents cover various types of therapies, products or their methods of use or manufacture. There may be third-party patents of which we are currently unaware with claims to technologies, methods of manufacture or methods for treatment related to the use or manufacture of our product candidates. Because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications that may later result in issued patents that our product candidates may infringe. In addition, third parties may obtain patents in the future and claim that use of our technologies infringes upon these patents.

Numerous third-party U.S. and foreign issued patents and pending patent applications exist in the fields in which we are developing product candidates. Our product candidates make use of CRISPR-based technology, which is a field that is highly active for patent filings. As of March 2022, it was reported that over 11,000 patent families worldwide related to CRISPR gene editing inventions and their uses. The extensive patent filings related to CRISPR make it difficult for us to assess the full extent of relevant patents and pending applications that may cover our Prime Editing technology and product candidates and their use or manufacture. There may be third-party patents or patent applications with claims to materials, formulations, methods of manufacture or methods for treatment related to the use or manufacture of our Prime Editing platform technology and product candidates. We are aware of multiple patents and patent applications directed to CRISPR technologies, Cas domains, including Cas9, and their uses in gene editing. For example, we are aware of a patent portfolio that is co-owned by the University of California, University of