Company: NINE
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001532286-25-000008
Chunk: 60

Company: Nine Energy Service, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-03-06
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 60
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 or enforce our intellectual property rights, such intellectual property rights may not provide significant value to our business, results of operations, or financial condition.

Moreover, our rights in our confidential information, trade secrets, and confidential know-how will not prevent third parties from independently developing similar technologies or duplicating such technologies. Publicly available information (e.g., information in issued patents, published patent applications, and scientific literature) can be used by third parties to independently develop technology, and we cannot provide assurance that this independently-developed technology will not be equivalent or superior to our proprietary technology. In addition, while we have patented some of our key technologies, we do not patent all of our proprietary technology, even when regarded as patentable. The process of seeking patent protection can be long and expensive. There can be no assurance that patents will be issued from currently pending or future applications or that, if patents are issued, they will be of sufficient scope or strength to provide meaningful protection or any commercial advantage to us. Further, with respect to exclusive third-party arrangements, these arrangements could be terminated, which would result in our inability to provide the services and/or products covered by such arrangements.

We may be adversely affected by disputes regarding intellectual property rights, and the value of our intellectual property rights is uncertain.

We may become involved in dispute resolution or litigation proceedings from time to time to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights. In these dispute resolution or litigation proceedings, a third-party defendant may assert that our intellectual property rights are invalid or unenforceable. Third parties from time to time may also initiate dispute resolution or litigation proceedings against us by asserting that our businesses infringe, impair, misappropriate, dilute, or otherwise violate another party’s intellectual property rights. For example, in April 2020, a third party filed a lawsuit asserting that our BreakThru Casing Flotation DeviceTM infringed its intellectual property rights, and in January 2022, a jury in the Western District of Texas, Waco Division, found in the third party’s favor. However, we intend to appeal the jury’s verdict. We may not prevail in such appeal or in any other proceedings relating to intellectual property rights, and our intellectual property rights may be found invalid or unenforceable or our products and services may be found to infringe, impair, misappropriate, dilute, or otherwise violate the intellectual property rights of others, in which case we may be required to pay damages or other compensation to the other party (which could be costly) and/or cease use of such