Company: APM
Filing Date: 2025-11-17
Form Type: F-1
Source: 0001213900-25-111548
Chunk: 85

Company: Aptorum Group Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-11-17
Form: F-1
Chunk 85
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 party in a nine-month window from issuance of the patent. A petition for inter partesreview can be filed immediately following the issuance of a patent if the patent has an effective filing date prior to March 16, 2013. A petition for inter partesreview can be filed after the nine-month-period for filing a post-grant review petition has expired for a patent with an effective filing date of March 16, 2013 or later. Post-grant review proceedings can be brought on any ground of invalidity, whereas inter partesreview proceedings can only raise an invalidity challenge based on published prior art and patents. These adversarial actions at the USPTO review patent claims without the presumption of validity afforded to U.S. patents in lawsuits in U.S. federal courts, and use a lower burden of proof than used in litigation in U.S. federal courts. Therefore, it is generally considered easier for a competitor or other party to have a U.S. patent invalidated in a USPTO post-grant review or inter partesreview proceeding than invalidated in a litigation in a U.S. federal court. If any of our patents are challenged by another party in such a USPTO proceeding, there is no guarantee that we or our licensors or collaborators will be successful in defending the patent, which would result in our loss of the challenged patent right. If we are unable to protect the confidentiality of our trade secrets, our business and competitive position would be harmed. In addition to our issued patents, provisional patent, and pending patent applications, we expect to rely on trade secrets, including unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information, to maintain our competitive position and protect our drug and diagnostics technology candidates. We seek to protect these trade secrets, in part, by entering into non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with parties that have access to them, such as our employees, corporate collaborators, outside scientific collaborators, sponsored researchers, contract manufacturers, consultants, advisors and other parties. We also enter into confidentiality and invention or patent assignment agreements with our employees and consultants. However, any of these parties may breach such agreements and disclose our proprietary information, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. Enforcing a claim that a party illegally disclosed or misappropriated a trade secret can be difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. If trade secrets which are material to our business were to be obtained by a competitor, our competitive position would be harmed. We may be subject to claims that our employees have wrongfully used or