Company: VERA
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-029969
Chunk: 69

Company: Vera Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 69
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-how and continuing technological innovation to develop and maintain our proprietary and intellectual property position. We may seek to protect our proprietary position by acquiring or in-licensing additional relevant issued patents or pending applications from third parties. If we or our potential licensors, 

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licensees or collaborators are unable to obtain or maintain patent protection with respect to atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, and our other products, proprietary technologies and their uses, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be significantly harmed.

Pending patent applications cannot be enforced against third parties practicing the technology claimed in such applications unless, and until, patents issue from such applications, and then only to the extent the issued claims cover the technology. There can be no assurance that our owned or in-licensed patent applications or our current or future licensors’, licensees’ or collaborators’ patent applications will result in additional patents being issued or that issued patents will afford sufficient protection against competitors with similar technology, nor can there be any assurance that the patents issued will not be infringed, designed around or invalidated by third parties.

Moreover, in the future, some of our owned or in-licensed patents and patent applications may be co-owned with third parties. If we are unable to obtain exclusive licenses to any such co-owners’ interest in such patents or patent applications, then such co-owners may be able to license their rights to other third parties, including our competitors, and our competitors could market competing products and technology. In addition, we may need the cooperation of any such co-owners in order to enforce such patents against third parties, and such cooperation may not be provided to us.

Even issued patents may later be found invalid or unenforceable or may be modified or revoked in proceedings instituted by third parties before various patent offices or in courts. Thus, the degree of future protection for our proprietary rights is uncertain. Only limited protection may be available and may not adequately protect our rights or permit us to gain or keep any competitive advantage. These uncertainties and/or limitations in our ability to properly protect the intellectual property rights relating to atacicept, MAU868, VT-109, or any future product candidates we may develop could significantly harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

We cannot be certain that the claims in our U.S. pending patent applications and corresponding international applications will be considered patentable by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) courts in the United States or by the patent offices and courts in foreign countries