Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-08-12
Form Type: S-1
Source: 0001193125-25-178989
Chunk: 220

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-08-12
Form: S-1
Chunk 220
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 agency or court, or (ii) an order from a court of competent jurisdiction prohibits us from continuing to satisfy our payment obligations to Coinbase under the Collaboration Agreement with respect to a given stablecoin, in either case, the parties will first try to amend the Collaboration Agreement or restructure their operations within a certain period of time (the “restructuring period”) to avoid such violation. If the amendment or restructuring proves ineffective or we do not resume payment to Coinbase with respect to such stablecoin under the Collaboration Agreement following the restructuring period, upon Coinbase’s written request, the Licensed Marks with respect to the relevant stablecoin would “flip,” in which case we would assign such Licensed Marks to Coinbase, the License Agreement would terminate with respect to such Licensed Marks, and the parties would enter into a new license agreement for such Licensed Marks. Coinbase would in turn grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and largely non-sublicensable right to use these flipped trademarks in connection with the advertising, promotion, marketing, commercialization, issuance, sale, distribution, development, provision, and receipt of such stablecoin. In addition, if such a flipped trademark situation were to occur with respect to USDC, under certain circumstances, we would be prohibited from issuing other U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins. See “Risk factors—Risks related to intellectual property—Our Collaboration Agreement with Coinbase could cause us to lose ownership or use of our trademarks upon the occurrence of certain events.”

While each of Circle and Coinbase may enter into distribution and incentive arrangements directly with third parties at their own discretion that do not impact the payment base, from time to time, Circle and Coinbase together may enter into arrangements with third parties approved by both us and Coinbase (such third parties, “approved participants”) that provide incentives to such approved participants to increase the circulation of stablecoins subject to the Collaboration Agreement. In anticipation of such arrangements, in November 2024, we and Coinbase entered into a supplement to the Collaboration Agreement (the “Stablecoin Ecosystem Agreement”), pursuant to which we and Coinbase agreed that, prior to a third party becoming an approved participant under the Stablecoin Ecosystem Agreement, we and Coinbase will agree on (i) the portion of the residual payment base that such third party will be eligible to receive upon becoming an approved participant and (ii) the undertakings to be required of such third party upon becoming an approved participant as a condition to receiving such portion of the residual payment base. Amounts payable to approved participants are deducted from the residual payment base