Company: DARE
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form Type: ARS
Source: 0001401914-25-000018
Chunk: 196

Company: Dare Bioscience, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-24
Form: ARS
Chunk 196
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 not present a risk, it is difficult to accurately predict the scope of claims that will issue from a patent application, our determination may be incorrect, and the issuing patent may be asserted against us or our licensors. We cannot guarantee that we or our licensors will be able to successfully settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims. If we or our licensors fail in any such dispute, in addition to being forced to pay monetary damages, we may be temporarily or permanently prohibited from commercializing our product candidates. We or our licensors might, if possible, also be forced to redesign our product candidates so that we or our licensors no longer infringe on the third-party intellectual property rights. Any of these events, even if we or our licensors were ultimately to prevail, could require us to divert substantial financial and management resources that we would otherwise be able to devote to our business. We also rely upon trade secrets to protect our technology, product and product candidates, and trade secrets can be difficult to maintain and enforce. In addition to patent and trademark protection, we also rely on trade secrets, including unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information, to derive a competitive advantage for products we develop, especially where we believe patent protection is not appropriate or obtainable. However, trade secrets are difficult to maintain. Monitoring unauthorized uses and disclosures of our intellectual property is difficult, and we do not know whether the steps we have taken to protect our intellectual property will be effective. Moreover, we or any of our collaborators’ employees, consultants, contractors or scientific and other advisors may unintentionally or willfully disclose our proprietary information to competitors and we may not have adequate remedies in respect of that disclosure. Enforcement of claims that a party illegally disclosed or obtained and is using trade secrets is difficult, expensive and time consuming and the outcome is unpredictable. In addition, foreign courts are sometimes less willing than U.S. courts to protect trade secrets. If our competitors independently develop equivalent knowledge, methods and know- how, we would not be able to assert our trade secrets against them and our business could be harmed. Our competitors may independently develop knowledge, methods and know-how equivalent to our trade secrets. Competitors may be able to legally obtain products of ours and replicate some or all of the competitive advantages we derive from our development efforts for technologies on which we do not have patent protection. If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor, we would have no right to prevent them, or those to whom they communicate it, from using that technology or information to compete