management’s attention and resources and significant defense costs and other professional fees, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Any potential sales to government entities are subject to a number of challenges and risks.
We may sell our services or solutions to U.S. federal, state, and local government, and agency, clients. Sales to such entities are subject to a number of challenges and risks. Selling to such entities can be highly competitive, expensive, and time-consuming, often requiring significant upfront time and expense without any assurance that these efforts will generate a sale. Government contracting requirements may change and in doing so restrict our ability to sell into the government sector until we have attained the revised certification. Government demand and payment for our offerings is dependent on many factors outside our control, including general economic conditions, public sector budgetary constraints and funding authorizations, and general political priorities, with funding reductions or delays adversely affecting public sector demand for our offerings.
Further, governmental and highly regulated entities may demand contract terms that differ from our standard arrangements. Such entities may have statutory, contractual, or other legal rights to terminate contracts with us or our partners due to a default or for other reasons. Any such termination may adversely affect our reputation, business, financial condition and results of operations.
Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.
Our success depends in part on our ability to protect our brand and proprietary trade secret and confidential information, including unpatented know-how, technology and other proprietary information, maintaining, defending and enforcing our intellectual property rights. We rely on our agreements with our clients, and non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements with employees and third parties, and our trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights to protect our intellectual property rights. However, any of these parties may breach such agreements and disclose our proprietary information, and we may not be able to obtain adequate remedies for such breaches. There is no assurance that we will be able to obtain, maintain, defend and enforce our intellectual property rights, or that such intellectual property rights will not be challenged, narrowed, held unenforceable or circumvented. Therefore, these legal protections and precautions may not prevent infringement, misappropriation or other violations of our intellectual property. Any litigation and any infringement, misappropriation or other violations of our intellectual property could hinder our ability to market and sell our solutions, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.
If any of our trade secrets were to be lawfully obtained or independently developed by a competitor or other third party, we would have no right to prevent them from using that technology or information to compete with us and our competitive position would be harmed.
Third parties may allege that our products and services, or the conduct of our business, infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate such third party’s intellectual property rights. Even if such claims are without merit, defending such claims would cause us to incur substantial expenses and could cause us to pay substantial damages or seek a costly license if we are found to be infringing, misappropriating, or otherwise violating a third party’s intellectual property rights. If we are unable to enter into a license on acceptable terms or at all, we could be forced to cease some aspect of our business operations or be forced to redesign our products or services so that we no longer infringe the third-party intellectual property rights, which may result in significant cost and delay to us, or which redesign could be technically infeasible. Even if resolved in our favor, litigation or other legal proceedings relating to intellectual property claims may cause us to incur significant expenses and could distract our employees and management personnel from their normal responsibilities.
Moreover, although we try to ensure that our employees do not use the proprietary information or know-how of others in their work for us, we may be subject to claims that we or these employees have used or disclosed intellectual property, including trade secrets or other proprietary information, of any third parties, including such individual’s former employer. If we fail in defending any such claims, in addition to paying monetary damages, we may lose valuable intellectual property rights or personnel. Even if we are successful in defending against such claims, litigation could result in substantial costs and be a distraction to management.
Furthermore, we currently own registered trademarks. In addition, any of our trademarks or trade names, whether registered or unregistered, may be challenged, opposed, infringed, cancelled, circumvented or declared generic, or determined to be infringing on other marks, as applicable. We may not be able to protect our rights to these trademarks