Company: PRTA
Filing Date: 2025-05-08
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001559053-25-000023
Chunk: 93

Company: PROTHENA CORP PUBLIC LTD CO
Filing Date: 2025-05-08
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part II, Item 1A
Chunk 93
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 and scientific questions. Accordingly, rights under any issued patents may not provide us with sufficient protection for our drug candidates or provide sufficient protection to afford us a commercial advantage against competitive products or processes. Additionally, our ability to obtain patent protection for our drug candidates also depends on our collaborators, partners, contractors, and employees involved in the generation of intellectual property to carry out their contractual duties, including those to assign or license relevant intellectual property rights developed on our behalf to us.

In addition, the strength of patents in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical field can be uncertain, and evaluating the scope of such patents involves complex legal, factual, and scientific analyses and has in recent years been the subject of much litigation, resulting in court decisions, including Supreme Court decisions, which have increased uncertainties as to the ability to enforce patent rights in the future. We cannot guarantee that any patents will issue from any pending or future patent applications owned by or licensed to us or our affiliates. In addition, the coverage claimed in a patent application can be significantly reduced before the patent is issued, and its scope can be reinterpreted after issuance. Consequently, we may not obtain or maintain adequate patent protection for any of our programs and product candidates. Even if patents have issued or will issue, we cannot guarantee that the claims of these patents are or will be valid or enforceable or will provide us with any significant protection against competitive products or otherwise be commercially valuable to us. Patent applications in the U. S. are maintained in confidence for up to 18 months after their filing. In some cases, however, patent applications remain confidential in the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (the “ USPTO”) for the entire time prior to issuance as a U. S. patent. Similarly, publication of discoveries in the scientific or patent literature often lags behind actual discoveries. Consequently, we cannot be certain that we or our licensors or co-owners were the first to invent, or the first to file patent applications on, our drug candidates or their use as drugs. In the event that a third party has also filed a U. S. patent application relating to our drug candidates or a similar invention, we may have to participate in interference or derivation proceedings declared by the USPTO to determine priority of invention in the U. S. The costs of these proceedings could be substantial and it is possible that our efforts would be unsuccessful, resulting in a loss of our U. S. patent position. Furthermore, we may not have identified all U. S. and non-U. S. patents