Company: HCWB
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: DRS
Source: 0000950123-25-003769
Chunk: 72

Company: HCW Biologics Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: DRS
Chunk 72
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Should we be required to obtain
licenses to any third-party technology, including any such patents required to manufacture, use, or sell our product candidates or any products, if approved, the growth of our business will likely depend in part on our ability to acquire,
in-license, maintain, or use these proprietary rights. The inability to obtain any third-party license required to develop or commercialize any of our product candidates could cause us to abandon any related efforts, which could seriously harm our
business and operations.

In addition, companies that perceive us to be a competitor may be unwilling to assign or license rights to us.
We also may be unable to license or acquire third-party intellectual property rights on terms that would allow us to make an appropriate return on our investment. Even if we are able to obtain a license, it may be non-exclusive, thereby giving our
competitors access to the same technologies licensed to us. If we are unable to successfully obtain a license to third-party intellectual property rights necessary for the development of a product candidate or program, we may have to abandon
development of that product candidate or program and our business and financial condition could suffer.

We are and may become subject to claims challenging the inventorship or ownership of our patents and other intellectual property.

We generally enter into confidentiality
and intellectual property assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, and contractors. These agreements generally provide that inventions conceived by the party in the course of rendering services to us will be our exclusive property.
However, those agreements may not be honored and may not effectively assign intellectual property rights to us. Moreover, there may be some circumstances, where we are unable to negotiate for such ownership rights. Disputes regarding ownership or
inventorship of intellectual property can also arise in other contexts, such as collaborations and sponsored research. Disputes challenging our rights in or to patents or other intellectual property, such as the lawsuit as we faced in our legal
proceedings with Altor/NantCell in 2024, have been and could be expensive and time consuming. If we were unsuccessful, we could lose valuable rights in intellectual property that we regard as our own. In addition, interferences, post-grant
proceedings, opposition proceedings, derivation proceedings, or other intellectual property proceedings provoked by third parties or brought by us or declared by the USPTO may be necessary to determine the priority of inventions with respect to our
patents or patent applications.

The failure to name the proper inventors on a patent application can result in the patents issuing