Company: ALGN
Filing Date: 2025-08-06
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001097149-25-000064
Chunk: 117

Company: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY INC
Filing Date: 2025-08-06
Form: 10-Q
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 117
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 the unauthorized use or disclosure of our trade secrets or other confidential information, adequate remedies may not exist to prevent unauthorized uses or disclosures.

Enforcement of our IP rights is time-consuming and costly, and could ultimately prove to be unsuccessful. In certain jurisdictions, enforcement of IP rights is more difficult due to legislation and geopolitical circumstances. As we launch our products in different regions at different times, our products may be acquired and reverse engineered by potential competitors in regions where infringement is more difficult to pursue. 

Our inability to maintain the proprietary nature of our technology through patents, copyrights, or trade secrets would impair our competitive advantages and could have a material effect on our operating results, financial condition, and future growth prospects. In particular, a failure to protect our IP rights might allow competitors to copy our technology or create counterfeit or pirated versions of our products, which could adversely affect our reputation, pricing, and market share. 

Litigation regarding our IP rights, rights claimed by third parties or IP litigation by any vendors on whose products or services we rely for our products and services may impact our ability to grow our business and adversely impact our reputation and results of operations.

Extensive litigation over IP rights is common in technologies and industries on which our products and services are based. Litigation, interferences, oppositions, re-exams, inter partes reviews, post grant reviews or other proceedings have been necessary and will likely be needed in the future to determine the validity and scope of certain of our IP rights and those claimed by third parties. These proceedings are used to determine the validity, scope or non-infringement of certain patent rights pertinent to the manufacture, use or sale of our products and the products of competitors. We have been, and may in the future be, sued and need to defend against lawsuits alleging infringement of third parties’ IP rights or other legal claims challenging our IP rights. In addition, we periodically receive letters from third parties drawing our attention to their IP rights and there may be other third-party IP rights of which we are presently unaware. As dentistry continues to become more digital, competitors may make defense of our IP more challenging. Asserting or defending these proceedings can be unpredictable, protracted, time-consuming, expensive, and distracting to management and technical personnel. Their outcomes may adversely affect our ability to manufacture and market our products and services, require us to seek licenses for infringing products or technologies, or result in the assessment of significant monetary damages. Unfavorable rulings could include monetary damages, injunctions prohibiting us from selling our products, or exclusion