Company: LGNZZ
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000886163-25-000012
Chunk: 45

Company: LIGAND PHARMACEUTICALS INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 45
---
 be reduced or will cease when the relevant patent expires. Our low-chloride patents and foreign equivalents are not expected to expire until 2033, our high purity patents and foreign equivalents are not expected to expire until 2029 and our morphology patents and foreign equivalents are not expected to expire until 2026 in the United States; however, the initially filed patents relating to Captisol expired starting in 2010 in the United States and in 2016 in most countries outside the United States. If our other intellectual property rights are not sufficient to prevent a generic form of Captisol from coming to market, and if in such case our partners choose to terminate their agreements with us, our Captisol revenue may decrease significantly.

We rely heavily on collaboration relationships to generate milestone and royalty payments and our collaboration partners have significant discretion when deciding whether to pursue any development program, and any failure by our partners to successfully develop a product candidate or a termination or breach of any of the related agreements could reduce our milestone and license fee revenue, and potentially reduce future royalties.

Our strategy for developing and commercializing many of our product candidates includes entering into collaboration agreements, outlicenses, and development funding and royalty purchase agreements with corporate and other collaboration partners. These agreements give our collaboration partners significant discretion when deciding whether or not to pursue any development program. Our existing collaborations may not continue or be successful, and we may be unable to enter into future collaboration arrangements to develop and commercialize our unpartnered assets.

In addition, our collaboration partners may develop products, either alone or with others, that compete with the types of products they are developing with us (or that we are developing on our own). This would result in increased competition for our or our partners' programs. If product candidates are approved for marketing under our collaboration programs, revenues we receive will depend on the manufacturing, marketing and sales efforts of our collaboration partners, who generally retain commercialization rights under the collaboration agreements. Generally, our current collaboration partners also have the right to terminate their collaborations at will or under specified circumstances. If any of our collaboration partners breach (for example, by not making required payments when due, or at all) or terminate their agreements with us or otherwise fail to conduct their collaboration activities successfully, including due to insolvency events, ongoing product development under these agreements will be delayed or terminated. Disputes or litigation may also arise with our collaborators (with us and/or with one or more third parties), including those over ownership rights to intellectual property, know-how or technologies developed with our collaboration partners. Such