Company: OCEA
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001641172-25-003155
Chunk: 2629

Company: Ocean Biomedical, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 2629
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 defense proceedings could put one or more of our patents at risk of being invalidated, held unenforceable, or interpreted narrowly
and could put our patent applications at risk of not issuing. Defense of these claims, regardless of their merit, would involve substantial
litigation expense and would be a substantial diversion of employee resources from our business.

We
may choose to challenge the patentability of claims in a third-party’s U.S. patent by requesting that the USPTO review the patent
claims in an ex-parte re-examination, inter partes review or post-grant review proceedings. These proceedings are expensive and may consume
our time or other resources. We may choose to challenge a third-party’s patent in patent opposition proceedings in the European
Patent Office, or EPO, or other foreign patent office. The costs of these opposition proceedings could be substantial, and may consume
our time or other resources. If we fail to obtain a favorable result at the USPTO, EPO or other patent office then we may be exposed
to litigation by a third-party alleging that the patent may be infringed by our product candidates or proprietary technologies.

In
addition, because some patent applications in the United States may be maintained in secrecy until the patents are issued, patent applications
in the United States and many foreign jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, and publications in the
scientific literature often lag behind actual discoveries, we cannot be certain that others have not filed patent applications for technology
covered by our owned and in-licensed issued patents or our pending applications, or that we or, if applicable, a licensor were the first
to invent the technology. Our competitors may have filed, and may in the future file, patent applications covering our products or technology
similar to ours. Any such patent application may have priority over our owned and in-licensed patent applications or patents, which could
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 by or in-licensed to us, we or, in the case of in-licensed technology, the licensor may have to participate in
an interference or derivation proceeding declared by the USPTO to determine priority of invention in the United States. If we or one
of our licensors is a party to an interference or derivation proceeding involving a U.S. patent application on inventions owned by or
in-licensed to us, we may incur substantial costs, divert management