Company: PRME
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-008884
Chunk: 132

Company: Prime Medicine, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 132
---
 obtain and maintain patent, trademark, trade secret and other intellectual property protection of our Prime Editing technology, product candidates and other technology, methods used to manufacture them and methods of treatment, as well as to successfully defend our patent and other intellectual property rights against third-party challenges. It is difficult and costly to protect our Prime Editing technology and product candidates, and we may not be able to ensure their protection. Our ability to stop unauthorized third parties from making, using, selling, offering to sell, importing or otherwise commercializing our product candidates we may develop is dependent upon the extent to which we have established rights under valid and enforceable patents or trade secrets that cover these activities.

We seek to protect our proprietary position by in-licensing intellectual property relating to our platform technology and filing patent applications in the United States and abroad related to our Prime Editing technology and product candidates that are important to our business. If we or our licensors are unable to obtain or maintain patent protection with respect to our Prime Editing technology and product candidates we may develop, or if the scope of the patent protection secured is not sufficiently broad, third parties could develop and commercialize products and technology similar or identical to ours and our ability to commercialize any product candidates we may develop may be adversely affected.

The patent prosecution process is expensive, time-consuming and complex, and we may not be able to file, prosecute, maintain, enforce, defend or license all necessary or desirable patent applications at a reasonable cost or in a timely manner. In addition, we may not pursue or obtain patent protection in all relevant markets. It is also possible that we will fail to identify patentable aspects of our research and development output in time to obtain patent protection. Although we enter into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties who have access to confidential or patentable aspects of our research and development output, such as our employees, corporate collaborators, outside scientific collaborators, CROs, contract manufacturers, consultants, advisors and other third parties, any of these parties may breach the agreements and disclose such output before a patent application is filed, thereby jeopardizing our ability to seek patent protection. In addition, our ability to obtain and maintain valid and enforceable patents depends on whether the differences between our inventions and the prior art allow our inventions to be patentable over the prior art. Furthermore, publications of discoveries in the scientific literature often lag behind the actual discoveries and patent applications in the United States and other jurisdictions are typically not published until 18 months after filing, or in some cases not at all. Therefore, we cannot be certain