Company: IMCR
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001671927-25-000006
Chunk: 146

Company: Immunocore Holdings plc
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 146
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 such an agreement with each party who, in fact, conceives or develops intellectual property that we regard as our own. 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 third parties, or defend claims that they may bring against us, to determine the ownership of what we regard as our intellectual property. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We may become involved in lawsuits and/or administrative proceedings to protect or enforce our patents and other intellectual property rights, which could be expensive, time consuming and unsuccessful.

Competitors and other third parties may infringe, misappropriate, challenge the validity of or otherwise violate our patents and other intellectual property rights. We may become involved in opposition, derivation, re-examination, revocation, inter partes review, post-grant review, interference or other administrative proceedings challenging our patent rights or the patent rights of others from whom we have obtained licenses to such rights. For example, we may be subject to a third-party submission of prior art to the USPTO challenging the priority of an invention claimed within one of our patents, which submissions may also be made prior to a patent’s issuance, precluding the granting of any of our pending patent applications. Additionally, our European patents may be involved in opposition proceedings at the European Patent Office, challenging the validity of those patents. Opposition proceedings may involve issues including, but not limited to, priority, patentability of the claims involved, and certain procedural formalities. As a result of the opposition proceedings, the European Patent Office’s Opposition Division(the "Opposition Division") can revoke a patent, maintain the patent as granted, or maintain the patent in an amended form. Decisions made by the Opposition Division can be appealed to the European Patent Office’s Appeal Board. Challenges to our patents, including in such opposition proceedings, may result in loss of patent rights, exclusivity, or in patent claims being narrowed, invalidated, or held unenforceable, in whole or in part, which could limit our ability to stop others from using or commercializing similar or identical technology and products, or limit the scope and duration of the patent protection of our ImmTAX platform technology and product candidates.

Additionally, our patents or the patents of our licensing or collaboration partners may in the future become, involved in inventorship or priority disputes, and our ability to commercialize our product candidates could be adversely affected if we do not