Company: HCWB
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-046724
Chunk: 218

Company: HCW Biologics Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 218
---
 obtain, maintain or extend adequate patent and other intellectual property rights could materially adversely affect our ability to develop and market our product candidates.

We may become involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our issued patents relating to one or more of our product candidates or our internally-developed platform, which could ultimately render our patents invalid or unenforceable and adversely affect our competitive position. Intellectual property litigation or other legal proceedings could cause us to spend substantial resources and distract our personnel from their normal responsibilities.

Competitors may infringe our patents or other intellectual property that relate to our immunotherapy platform technology and product candidates, their respective methods of use, manufacture, and formulations thereof. Third parties may in the future claim that our operations infringe their intellectual property rights. To defend against such claims, protect our competitive position and counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may from time to time need to resort to litigation to enforce or defend any patents or other intellectual property rights owned or licensed by us by filing infringement claims. We may be subject to further litigation in the future, involving claims that we have misappropriated or misused other parties’ trade secrets or information.  To the extent we gain greater market visibility, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims, which is not uncommon with respect to the biopharmaceutical industry. 

As enforcement of intellectual property rights is difficult, unpredictable, time-consuming, and expensive, we may fail in enforcing our rights, in which case our competitors may be permitted to use our technology without being required to pay us any license fees. In addition, litigation involving our patents carries the risk that one or more of our patents will be held invalid (in whole, in part, or on a claim-by-claim basis) or held unenforceable. Such an adverse court ruling could allow third parties to commercialize our product candidates or methods, or our immunotherapy platform technology, and then compete directly with us, without payment to us.  

Even if resolved in our favor, such litigation and other legal proceedings may cause us to incur significant expenses and would be likely to divert significant resources from our core business, including distracting our technical and management personnel from their normal responsibilities, and may impact our reputation. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. Such litigation or proceedings could substantially increase our operating losses and reduce our resources