Company: HMDCF
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000377
Chunk: 81

Company: HUTCHMED (China) Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 1
Chunk 81
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 starting from the date of application.

We, our joint ventures and/or our collaboration partners may become involved in patent litigation against third parties to enforce our or their patent rights, to invalidate patents held by such third parties, or to defend against such claims. A court may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that our or our joint ventures’ patents do not cover the third-party technology in question. Further, such third parties could counterclaim that we or our joint ventures infringe their intellectual property or that a patent we, our joint ventures or our collaboration partners have asserted against them is invalid or unenforceable. In patent litigation, defendant counterclaims challenging the validity, enforceability or scope of asserted patents are commonplace. In addition, third parties may initiate legal proceedings against us or our intellectual property to assert such challenges to our intellectual property rights.

The outcome of any such proceeding is generally unpredictable. Grounds for a validity challenge could be an alleged failure to meet any of several statutory requirements, including lack of novelty, obviousness or non-enablement. Patents may be unenforceable if someone connected with prosecution of the patent withheld relevant information or made a misleading statement during prosecution. It is possible that prior art of which we, our joint ventures or our collaboration partners and the patent examiner were unaware during prosecution exists, which could render our or their patents invalid. Moreover, it is also possible that prior art may exist that we, our joint ventures or our collaboration partners are aware of but do not believe is relevant to our or their current or future patents, but that could nevertheless be determined to render our patents invalid. The cost to us or our joint ventures of any patent litigation or similar proceeding could be substantial, and it may consume significant management time. We and our joint ventures do not maintain insurance to cover intellectual property infringement.

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An adverse result in any litigation proceeding could put one or more of our or our joint ventures’ patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly. If a defendant were to prevail on a legal assertion of invalidity or unenforceability of our patents covering one of our or our joint ventures’ products or our drug candidates, we could lose at least part, and perhaps all, of the patent protection covering such product or drug candidate. Competing drugs may also be sold in other countries in which our or our joint ventures’ patent coverage might not exist or be as strong. If we lose a foreign patent lawsuit, alleging our or our joint ventures’ infringement of a competitor’s