Company: OCEA
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001641172-25-003155
Chunk: 2634

Company: Ocean Biomedical, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-08
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 2634
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 selling or importing products made using
our inventions in and into the United States or other jurisdictions. Competitors may use our technologies in jurisdictions where we have
not obtained patent protection to develop their own products and, further, may export otherwise infringing products to territories where
we have patent protection but where enforcement is not as strong as that in the United States. These products may compete with our products
in jurisdictions where we do not have any issued patents and our patent claims or other intellectual property rights may not be effective
or sufficient to prevent them from competing.

104

Many
companies have encountered significant problems in protecting and defending intellectual property rights in foreign jurisdictions. The
legal systems of certain countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not favor the enforcement of, and may require a compulsory
license to, patents, trade secrets and other intellectual property protection, particularly those relating to biopharmaceutical products,
which could make it difficult for us to stop the infringement of our patents or marketing of competing products against third parties
in violation of our proprietary rights generally. The initiation of proceedings by third parties to challenge the scope or validity of
our patent rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial cost and divert our efforts and attention from other aspects of
our business. Proceedings to enforce our patent rights in foreign jurisdictions could result in substantial costs and divert our efforts
and attention from other aspects of our business, could put our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly and our
patent applications at risk of not issuing and could provoke third parties to assert claims against us. We may not prevail in any lawsuits
that we initiate and the damages or other remedies awarded, if any, may not be commercially meaningful. Accordingly, our efforts to enforce
our intellectual property rights around the world may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual
property that we develop or license.

Patent
terms may be inadequate to protect our competitive position on our product candidates for an adequate amount of time.

Patents
have a limited lifespan. In the United States, if all maintenance fees are timely paid, the natural expiration of a patent is generally
20 years from its earliest U.S. non-provisional filing date. Various extensions such as patent term adjustments and/or extensions, may
be available, but the life of a patent, and the protection it affords, is limited. Even if patents covering our product candidates are
obtained, once the patent life has expired, we may be open to competition from competitive products. Given the amount of time