Company: DVAX
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001029142-25-000049
Chunk: 16

Company: DYNAVAX TECHNOLOGIES CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 16
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 a court or patent office could subject us to significant liabilities, require disputed rights to be licensed from other parties, or require us to cease using some of our technology. We may not prevail in these actions or proceedings if they arise. 

In addition, other parties may duplicate, design around or independently develop similar or alternative technologies to ours or our licensors. 

We may rely, in some circumstances, on trade secrets and confidentiality agreements to protect our technology. Although trade secrets are difficult to protect, wherever possible, we use confidential disclosure agreements to protect the proprietary nature of our technology. Our standard practice is to require each of our collaborators, commercial partners, employees, consultants, contractors and advisors to enter into an agreement before beginning their employment, consulting or advisory relationship with us that in general provides that the individuals must keep confidential and not disclose to other parties any of our confidential information developed or learned by the individuals during the course of their relationship with us except in limited circumstances. These agreements with employees, consultants and contractors also generally provide that we own all inventions conceived by the individuals in the course of rendering their employment or services to us. However, there can be no assurance that these agreements will not be breached, that we will have adequate remedies for any breach, or that our trade secrets and/or proprietary information will not otherwise become known or be independently discovered by competitors. To the extent that our employees, consultants or contractors use intellectual property owned by others in their work for us, disputes may also arise as to the rights in related or resulting know-how and inventions. 

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Table of Contents

COMPETITION

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries are characterized by rapidly advancing technologies, intense competition and a strong emphasis on proprietary products. Our products and development programs compete with several commercially available vaccine and adjuvant products. Many companies and institutions are making substantial investments in developing additional vaccines and adjuvants that could compete directly or indirectly with our marketed products and products under development by us and our collaborators. For example, there are multiple other shingles vaccine candidates in development including those being developed by Pfizer, BioNTech SE, Curevo Vaccine, Moderna, Inc., and others. The approved products from these programs will all need to compete with a single approved vaccine currently available in the U.S. 

We also believe our CpG 1018 adjuvant, which we use in our own products and product candidates and provide to our collaborators through clinical and commercial supply agreements, is as or more effective than other available adjuvants and, being a yeast-derived product