Company: LIDRW
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001437749-25-004906
Chunk: 9

Company: AEye, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 9
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 we may utilize from key suppliers, as well as for our design-for-manufacturability, or DFM, and other critical capabilities. Additionally, this team works alongside our operations team to assist our Tier 1 and contract manufacturer partners as they develop large-scale manufacturing processes based on our lidar design.

Intellectual Property

We believe that our competitive advantage and our success depend in part upon our ability to develop and protect both our intellectual property and our technology. We own a portfolio of intellectual property which includes patents (issued and pending), registered trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how in the development of our lidar solutions.

We have filed patent and trademark applications in order to further secure these rights and strengthen our ability to defend against third parties who may infringe on our rights. We also rely on trade secrets, design and manufacturing know-how, continuing technological innovations, and licensing and exclusivity opportunities to maintain and improve our competitive position. Additionally, we protect our proprietary rights through agreements with our commercial partners, vendors, employees, and consultants, as well as close monitoring of the developments, components, products, and competitors in the industry.

As of February 1, 2025, we owned 94 U.S. and foreign issued patents and we had 44 pending U.S. and foreign patent applications, with one patent application in the drafting stage. In addition, we have two registered trademarks and one pending trademark application. Our patents and patent applications cover a broad range of system level and component level aspects of our key technology including, among other things, bistatic lidar system architecture, laser, scanner, receiver, and perception technology.

Sales and Marketing

Historically we have utilized a combination of channel (indirect) sales and direct sales methods. In the Automotive market, we work with Tier 1 partners that are suppliers to OEMs and leverage their sales channels which allows us to substantially reduce our investment in sales and marketing. We intend to license our lidar designs and other intellectual property to our Tier 1 partners, who will then industrialize and sell our technology to their OEM customers. Working with Tier 1 partners allows us to use this existing automotive value chain and provides us with an opportunity to increase our penetration of the Automotive market more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. This, in turn, will substantially reduce our investment in sales and marketing, and it will also substantially reduce the associated costs for manufacturing, working capital, validation, and testing, as well as the overhead of product liability and warranty over the life of the