Company: DNLI
Filing Date: 2025-11-06
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001714899-25-000193
Chunk: 363

Company: Denali Therapeutics Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-11-06
Form: 10-Q
Item: Part II, Item 1A
Chunk 363
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 after filing or until issuance, we cannot be certain that we or our licensors were the first to either (i) file any patent application related to our TV platform, product candidates or other technologies or (ii) invent any of the inventions claimed in our or our licensor’s patents or patent applications. Further, changes in the leadership or staffing of the PTO and other federal agencies may lead to new policies and changes in the regulations that may impact the timelines of our patents applications.

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The America Invents Act also includes a number of significant changes that affect the way patent applications will be prosecuted and also may affect patent litigation. These include allowing third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO during patent prosecution and additional procedures to attack the validity of a patent by USPTO administered post-grant proceedings, including post-grant review, inter partes review, and derivation proceedings. Because of a lower evidentiary standard in USPTO proceedings compared to the evidentiary standard in United States federal courts necessary to invalidate a patent claim, a third party could potentially provide evidence in a USPTO proceeding sufficient for the USPTO to hold a claim invalid even though the same evidence would be insufficient to invalidate the claim if first presented in a district court action. Accordingly, a third party may attempt to use the USPTO procedures to invalidate our patent claims that would not have been invalidated if first challenged by the third party as a defendant in a district court action. Therefore, the America Invents Act and its implementation could increase the uncertainties and costs surrounding the prosecution of our owned or in-licensed patent applications and the enforcement or defense of our owned or in-licensed issued patents, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects.

In addition, the patent positions of companies in the development and commercialization of biologics and pharmaceuticals are particularly uncertain. Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have narrowed the scope of patent protection available in certain circumstances and weakened the rights of patent owners in certain situations. For example, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Amgen v. Sanofi (2023) that a functionally claimed genus was invalid for failing to comply with the enablement requirement of the Patent Act. In addition, the Federal circuit recently issued a decision involving the interaction of patent term adjustment ("PTA"), terminal disclaimers, and obvious-type double patenting. This combination of events has created uncertainty with respect to the validity and enforceability