Company: CRCL
Filing Date: 2025-04-18
Form Type: S-1/A
Source: 0001193125-25-084832
Chunk: 227

Company: Circle Internet Group, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-18
Form: S-1/A
Chunk 227
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 assets are the property of stablecoin holders, and not the bankruptcy estate, stablecoin holders may still experience
delays in recovering the underlying assets due to, among other things, bankruptcy administration, ongoing litigation, or application of the automatic stay. At the same time, it is possible that a U.S. court, in the case of USDC, or a French court,
in the case of EURC, could instead determine that the reserve assets backing USDC and EURC, respectively, are property of our bankruptcy estate. If this were to happen, other creditors of Circle may be able to obtain recoveries from the underlying
reserve assets and holders of Circle stablecoins could be treated as general unsecured creditors of Circle, which could result in Circle stablecoin holders receiving only partial recoveries rather than the full purported value of their stablecoin
holdings.

159

We will continue to monitor legal, regulatory, and other developments in order to take reasonable and appropriate
steps to continue the safeguarding of Circle stablecoin reserves.

Intellectual property

The protection of our technology and intellectual property is an important aspect of our business. We rely upon a combination of trademark, patent, trade secret, and
copyright laws in the United States and similar laws in other countries, as well as confidentiality procedures, contractual commitments, and other legal rights to establish, maintain, and protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights. We
have an active program of establishing, maintaining, and protecting our intellectual property and proprietary rights, including our proprietary technology, through the filing of patents, registration of trademarks, and use of contractual measures
and other intellectual property rights. We generally enter into agreements with our employees, consultants, contractors, and other third parties that include confidentiality and nondisclosure provisions in order to limit access to, and disclosure
and use of, our confidential information, trade secrets, know-how, and proprietary technology. Those agreements also often include invention or work product assignment provisions to establish, maintain, and
protect our brand and other intellectual property rights. We may also agree to license our intellectual property to third parties as part of various agreements.

As
of December 31, 2024, we have 19 issued patents in the United States and filed 41 nonprovisional patent applications in the United States, as well as 35 patent applications in foreign jurisdictions, with respect to our technology. We held 20
registered trademarks in the United States, including the Circle name and Circle logo, and also held 324 registered trademarks in foreign jurisdictions. We