Company: ATRA
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-035507
Chunk: 112

Company: Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-07
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 112
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 and other factors, our patent applications may fail to result in issued patents with claims that cover our products and product candidates in the U.S. or in other countries. 

Even if patents have issued or do successfully issue from patent applications, and even if these patents cover our product and product candidates, third parties may still challenge the validity, enforceability or scope thereof, which may result in these patents being narrowed, invalidated or held to be unenforceable. No assurance can be given that if challenged, our patents would be declared by a court to be valid or enforceable.

Even if unchallenged, our patents and patent applications or other intellectual property rights may not adequately protect our intellectual property, provide exclusivity for our product and product candidates or prevent others from designing around our claims. The possibility exists that others will develop products on an independent basis which have the same effect as our product and product candidates and which do not infringe our patents or other intellectual property rights, or that others will design around the claims of patents that we have had issued that cover our product and product candidates. If the breadth or strength of protection provided by our patents and patent applications with respect to our product and product candidates are threatened, it could jeopardize our ability to commercialize our products and product candidates and dissuade companies from collaborating with us. 

We may also desire to seek a license from a third party who owns intellectual property that may be useful for providing exclusivity for our product and product candidates, or for providing the ability to develop and commercialize a product candidate in an unrestricted manner. There is no guarantee that we will be able to obtain a license from such a third party on commercially reasonable terms, or at all.

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Additionally, the USPTO and various foreign governmental patent agencies require compliance with a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other similar provisions during the patent application process. While an inadvertent lapse can in many cases be cured by payment of a late fee or by other means in accordance with the applicable rules, there are situations in which noncompliance can result in abandonment or lapse of the patent or patent application, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction.

We and our partners have filed a number of patent applications with claims directed to our product and product candidates or methods of using or making the product and those product candidates. We cannot offer any assurances about which, if any, patents will be issued with respect to these pending patent applications, the breadth of claims in any such patents that are ultimately issued