48 Third-party claims of intellectual property infringement, misappropriation or other violation against us or our collaborators may prevent or delay the development and commercialization of our product candidates, the ABC Platform and other technologies. The field of discovering treatments for retinal diseases is highly competitive and dynamic. Due to the focused research and development that is taking place in this field by several companies, including us and our competitors, the intellectual property landscape is in flux, and it may remain uncertain in the future. As such, there may be significant intellectual property related litigation and proceedings relating to our owned, and other third party, intellectual property and proprietary rights in the future. Our commercial success depends in part on our and our collaborators’ ability to avoid infringing, misappropriating and otherwise violating the patents and other intellectual property rights of third parties. There is a substantial amount of complex litigation involving patents and other intellectual property rights in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as administrative proceedings challenging patents, including interference, derivation and reexamination proceedings before the USPTO or oppositions and other comparable proceedings in foreign jurisdictions. As discussed above, procedures including inter partes review and post-grant review adds uncertainty to the possibility of challenge to our patents. Numerous U.S. and foreign issued patents and pending patent applications owned by third parties exist relating to ABC technology and in the fields in which we are developing our product candidates. As the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries expand and more patents are issued, the risk increases that our ABC Platform, product candidates and other technologies may give rise to claims of infringement of the patent rights of others. We cannot assure you that our ABC Platform, product candidates and other technologies that we have developed, are developing or may develop in the future will not infringe existing or future patents owned by third parties. We may not be aware of patents that have already been issued or that a third party, including a competitor in the fields in which we are developing our ABC Platform, product candidates and other technologies, might assert are infringed by our current or future ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies. Such a dispute may concern claims to compositions, formulations, methods of manufacture or methods of use or treatment that cover our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies. It is also possible that patents owned by third parties of which we are aware, but which we do not believe are relevant to our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies, could be found to be infringed by our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies. In addition, because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending patent applications that later result in issued patents that our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies may be alleged to be infringing. Third parties may have patents or obtain patents in the future and claim that the manufacture, use or sale of our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies infringes these patents. If a third party alleges that we infringe their patents or that we are otherwise employing their proprietary technology without authorization and initiates litigation against us, a court of competent jurisdiction could hold that such patents are valid, enforceable and infringed by our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies, even if we believe such claims are without merit. In that event, the successful plaintiff may be able to impede our ability to commercialize the applicable product candidate or technology unless we obtain a license under the applicable patents, or such patents expire or are finally determined to be invalid or unenforceable. Such a license may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all. Even if we are able to obtain a license, the license would likely obligate us to pay license fees, royalties or both. Any license granted to us might be nonexclusive, which could result in our competitors gaining access to the same intellectual property. If we are unable to obtain a necessary license to a third-party patent on commercially reasonable terms, we may be unable to commercialize our ABC Platform, product candidates or other technologies, or our commercialization efforts may be significantly delayed, which could in turn significantly harm our business. We are aware of a number of patents and patent applications that are directed to one or more aspects of tarcocimab, KSI- 501, and/or KSI-101. Our intent is to maintain our development efforts under 35 U.S.C. Section 271(e)(1) (which provides a safe harbor from patent infringement claims related to certain drug development activities) through to at least the launch of any tarcocimab, KSI-501, or KSI-101 product. We are aware of at least one pending patent application with claims that are directed to some aspect of tarcocimab, KSI-501, and/or KSI-101 that could, if issued, have a patent term beyond a potential launch date for tarcocimab, KSI-501, or KSI-101. If this were to occur, we may be required to challenge the validity of the claims, obtain a license, modify tarcocimab, KSI-501, or KSI-101, or delay launch. We are also aware of at least one patent family with issued claims that may be relevant to some potential future aspect(s) of KSI-501 and/or KSI-101 and that have a patent term beyond a potential launch date for KSI-501 or KSI-101. If this or any other patent family were perceived as relevant, we may be required to challenge the validity of the claims, obtain a license, modify KSI-501 and/or KSI-101, or delay launch. If we choose to further the pipeline and develop a different product, such a product would be delayed until the expiration of any valid patent that is still in force on such product. Alternatively, our options for addressing any such patents relating to these non-tarcocimab, non-KSI-501, and/or non-KSI-101 products would include the following: challenge the validity of the claims, obtain a license, or modify the non-tarcocimab, non-KSI-501, and/or non-KSI-101 products.