Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-05-27
Form Type: S-1/A
Source: 0001193125-25-126208
Chunk: 109

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-05-27
Form: S-1/A
Chunk 109
---
 Our failure, or the failure by our third-party providers or partners, to comply with applicable laws or regulations could damage our reputation or result in fines or proceedings by governmental agencies as well
as private litigation.

71

Risks related to intellectual property

Our intellectual property rights are valuable. Any inability to protect and enforce such intellectual property rights could adversely impact our business, results of operations, financial condition, and prospects.

Our business depends in part on our ability to seek, obtain, and maintain intellectual property
protection, including with respect to our proprietary technology and our brand. We rely on, and expect to continue to rely on, a combination of trademark, trade dress, domain name, copyright, patent, and trade secret laws in the United States and
similar laws in other countries, as well as confidentiality and license agreements with our employees, contractors, consultants, and third parties with whom we have relationships, to establish, maintain, and protect our brand and other intellectual
property rights. Our efforts to establish, maintain, protect, and enforce our intellectual property rights may not be sufficient or effective. Our intellectual property rights, including rights in our proprietary technology and trade secrets, could
be lost through misappropriation or breach of our confidentiality and license agreements. Moreover, any of our intellectual property rights may be circumvented, infringed, diluted, disclosed, misappropriated, or challenged, which could result in
them being narrowed in scope or declared invalid or unenforceable. There can be no assurance that our intellectual property rights will be sufficient to protect against others offering products, services, or technologies that are substantially
similar to ours and that compete with our business.

Furthermore, there can be no assurance that our patent applications will be approved, any patents issued will be
of sufficient scope or strength to provide us with meaningful protection, or such patents will not be challenged by third parties. We may also fail to accurately predict all of the countries where patent protection will ultimately be desirable, and
if we fail to timely file a patent application in any such country, we may be precluded from doing so at a later date. The patents issued may vary in scope of coverage depending on the country in which such patents issue.

As we have grown, we have sought to obtain and protect our intellectual property rights in an increasing number of countries, a process that can be expensive and may not
always be successful. For example, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and various foreign governmental intellectual property agencies require compliance with a number of procedural requirements to