Company: IOBT
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-047744
Chunk: 210

Company: IO Biotech, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 210
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 equivalent information and techniques. Furthermore, the laws of some foreign countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent or in the same manner as the laws of the United States. As a result, we may encounter significant problems in protecting and defending our intellectual property both in the United States and abroad. If we are unable to prevent unauthorized material disclosure of our intellectual property to third parties, we will not be able to establish or maintain a competitive advantage in our market, and this scenario could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. 

Intellectual property rights do not necessarily address all potential threats to our competitive advantage. 

The degree of future protection afforded by our intellectual property rights is uncertain because intellectual property rights have limitations and may not adequately protect our business or permit us to maintain our competitive advantage. For example: 

•others may be able to make product candidates that are the same as or similar to ours but that are not covered by the claims of the patents that we own or have exclusively licensed; 

•we or our licensors or future collaborators might not have been the first to make the inventions covered by the issued patent or pending patent application that we own or have exclusively licensed; 

•we or our licensors or future collaborators might not have been the first to file patent applications covering certain of our inventions; 

•others may independently develop similar or alternative technologies or duplicate any of our technologies without infringing our intellectual property rights; 

102

•it is possible that noncompliance with the USPTO and foreign governmental patent agencies requirement for a number of procedural, documentary, fee payment and other provisions during the patent process can result in abandonment or lapse of a patent or patent application, and partial or complete loss of patent rights in the relevant jurisdiction; 

•it is possible that our pending patent applications will not lead to issued patents; 

•issued patents that we own or have exclusively licensed may be revoked, modified, or held invalid or unenforceable, as a result of legal challenges by our competitors; 

•our competitors might conduct research and development activities in countries where we do not have patent rights and then use the information learned from such activities to develop competitive products for sale in our major commercial markets; 

•we may not develop additional proprietary technologies that are patentable; 

•we cannot predict the scope of protection of any patent issuing based on our patent applications, including whether the patent applications that we own or in-license will result in issued patents with claims that directed to our product candidates or uses thereof in the United States or in