Company: DARE
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001401914-25-000012
Chunk: 252

Company: Dare Bioscience, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 252
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 published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our product candidates or the use of our product candidates. The scope of a patent claim is determined by an interpretation of the law, the written disclosure in a patent and the patent’s prosecution history. Our or our licensors’ interpretation of the relevance or the scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to market our product candidates. We or our licensors may incorrectly determine that our product candidates are not covered by a third-party patent or may incorrectly predict whether a third party’s pending application will issue with claims of relevant scope. Our or our licensors’ determination of the expiration date of any patent in the U.S., the EU or elsewhere that we consider relevant may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our product candidates. Our licensors’ failure to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

From time to time, we or our licensors may identify patents or applications in the same general area as our products and product candidates. We or our licensors may determine these third-party patents are irrelevant to our business based on various factors including our or our licensors’ interpretation of the scope of the patent claims and our or our licensors’ interpretation of when the patent expires. If the patents are asserted against us, however, a court may disagree with our or our licensors’ determinations. Further, while we or our licensors may determine that the scope of claims that will issue from a patent application does not present a risk, it is difficult to accurately predict the scope of claims that will issue from a patent application, our determination may be incorrect, and the issuing patent may be asserted against us or our licensors. We cannot guarantee that we or our licensors will be able to successfully settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims. If we or our licensors fail in any such dispute, in addition to being forced to pay monetary damages, we may be temporarily or permanently prohibited from commercializing our product candidates. We or our licensors might, if possible, also be forced to redesign our product candidates so that we or our licensors no longer infringe on the third-party intellectual property rights. Any of these events, even if we or our licensors were ultimately to prevail, could require us to divert substantial financial and management resources that we would otherwise be able to devote to our business.

We also rely upon trade secrets to protect our technology, product and product candidates, and trade secrets can be difficult to maintain and enforce.