Company: VERA
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029969
Chunk: 75

Company: Vera Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 75
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 competitive advantage. Any patents that we own or in-license may be challenged or circumvented by third parties or may be narrowed or invalidated as a result of challenges by third parties. Consequently, we do not know whether atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop will be protectable or remain protected by valid and enforceable patents. Our competitors or other third parties may be able to circumvent our patents by developing similar or alternative technologies or products in a non-infringing manner which could significantly harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

The issuance of a patent is not conclusive as to its inventorship, scope, validity or enforceability, and our patents may be challenged in the courts or patent offices in the United States and abroad.

The process by which patent applications are examined and considered for issuance as patents involves consideration by the relevant patent office of “prior art” relative to the invented technology. Different countries have different rules about what information or events can be considered “prior art,” and different requirements regarding when a patent application must be filed relative to any particular piece of potential prior art. Moreover, legal decisions can re-interpret or change whether particular information or events are considered to be “prior art.” Still further, in the United States, patent applicants are required to notify the USPTO of any material “prior art” of which they are aware for the patent examiner to consider in addition to independent searches that the patent examiner is required to do. Also, in the United States and certain other jurisdictions, third parties are entitled to submit prior art to patent offices for consideration during examination.

We may not be aware of certain relevant prior art, may fail to identify or timely cite certain prior art, or may not be able to convince a patent examiner that our patent(s) should issue in light of the art. Also, we cannot be certain that all relevant art will be or 

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was identified during examination of a patent application so that, even if a patent issues, it may be susceptible to challenge that it is not valid over art that was not considered during its examination.

We may be subject to a third-party pre-issuance submission of prior art to the USPTO or other jurisdictions, or become involved in post-grant challenges such as opposition, derivation, revocation, reexamination, post-grant review (PGR) and inter partes review (IPR), or other similar proceedings, or in litigation, challenging our patent rights, including by challenging the