Company: ZLAB
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-008409
Chunk: 193

Company: Zai Lab Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 193
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, and advisors are currently or were previously employed at universities or other biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies, including our competitors or potential competitors. Although we try to prevent our employees, consultants, and advisors from improperly using the intellectual property or other proprietary information of their current or former employers in their work for us, these efforts may not be successful. 

Litigation may be necessary to defend against such claims, and even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management and research personnel. If our defenses to these claims fail, in addition to requiring us to pay monetary damages, a court could prohibit us from using certain technologies or features that are essential to our products and product candidates if such technologies or features are found to incorporate or be derived from the trade secrets or other proprietary information of another party. An inability to incorporate such technologies or features could have a material adverse effect on our business and may prevent us from successfully commercializing our affected products and product candidates. In addition, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel as a result of such claims. Moreover, any such litigation or the threat of such litigation may adversely affect our ability to hire employees or contract with necessary personnel. A loss of key personnel or their work product could hamper or prevent our ability to develop or commercialize our products and product candidates, which would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

In addition, while we require our employees and contractors who may be involved in the conception or development of intellectual property to execute agreements assigning such intellectual property to us, we may be unsuccessful in enforcing such agreements. The assignment of intellectual property rights may not be self-executing, or the assignment agreements may be breached, and we may be forced to bring claims against our employees, contractors, or other third parties, or defend claims that they may bring against us, to determine the ownership of certain intellectual property. Such claims could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects. 

We may not be successful in obtaining intellectual property rights for acquired or in-licensed product candidates.

Our business model depends, in part, on our ability to successfully identify and acquire or in-license product candidates to enhance and strengthen our product pipeline. For such acquired or in-licensed product candidates, we may be unable to secure intellectual property rights relating to, or necessary for, commercialization of any such product candidates from third parties on commercially reasonable terms or at all. In such event,