Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-024813
Chunk: 18

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-21
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 18
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 continues only as long as the mark is used. Other countries require registration of trademarks and the payment of registration fees. Trademark registrations are generally for fixed but renewable terms. This Annual Report may refer to these and other trademarks and tradenames.  Solely for convenience, our trademarks and tradenames referred to in this Annual Report may appear without the ® or ™ symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate in any way that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights to these trademarks and tradenames. This Annual Report may also include trademarks owned by other parties, and all other such trademarks mentioned in this Annual Report are the property of their respective owners.

We protect our proprietary technology, in part, through confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with employees, consultants, and other parties. Our confidentiality agreements with employees and consultants generally contain standard provisions requiring those individuals to assign to STAAR, without additional consideration, inventions conceived or reduced to practice by them while employed or retained by STAAR, subject to customary exceptions. We cannot provide any assurance that employees and consultants will abide by the confidentiality or other terms of their agreements. Despite measures taken to protect our intellectual property, unauthorized parties may copy aspects of our products or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary.

Seasonality

While certain individual markets may be impacted by seasonal trends on a quarterly basis, in the aggregate, seasonality does not materially affect our sales.

Working Capital Requirements

There are no special inventory requirements or credit terms extended to customers that have a material adverse effect on our working capital.

Distribution and Customers

We market our products to a variety of health care providers, including ophthalmic surgeons, vision centers, surgical centers, hospitals, government facilities, and distributors. Ophthalmologists are the primary users of our products.

We sell our products directly through our own sales representatives in Japan, the U.S., Germany, Spain, Singapore, Canada, and the U.K. We sell through a combination of our own representatives and independent distributors in China, Korea, India, France, Benelux, and Italy. We sell through independent distributors in other countries. Our products are sold in more than 75 countries worldwide. We maintain a global marketing team, as well as regional marketing personnel to support the promotion and sale of our products. The global marketing department supports selling efforts by developing and providing promotional materials, speakers’ programs, digital and social media sites, participation in trade shows and technical presentations. Where we distribute products directly, we rely on local sales representatives to help generate