Our research and development personnel support all areas of our business, mainly focusing on the improvement and enhancement of our SaaS businesses, Lofty and Trucker Path. Our research and development personnel also focus on enhancing the user experience through commonly used user interfaces, including mobile apps, and ensuring our products are fully compatible with the latest mobile operating systems such as iOS, Android, and Windows. In 2023, with the acquisition of Rentancy by Lofty, we expect to increasingly invest in developing Lofty products to serve property managers and landlords. We periodically shift the priorities of our research and development personnel to ensure we continually develop new products and services to extend our customer reach and meet the needs of our user base.
Our research and development expenses primarily include salaries and benefits for our research and development personnel. We incurred US$9.8 million and US$9.0 million of research and development expenses for the six months ended June 30, 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property includes trademarks and trademark applications related to our brands and services, copyrights in software, trade secrets, patent applications and other intellectual property rights and licenses. We seek to protect our intellectual property assets and brand through a combination of monitoring and enforcement of trademark, patent, copyright and trade secret protection laws in the US, PRC, and other jurisdictions, as well as through confidentiality agreements and procedures.
We have been granted 1 patent. In addition, we maintain 32 copyright registrations, all of which are computer software copyright registrations as of June 30, 2024. Our employees sign confidentiality and non-compete agreements when hired.
Trend Information
Other than as disclosed elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, we are not aware of any trends, uncertainties, demands, commitments or events for the six months ended June 30, 2024 that are reasonably likely to have a material adverse effect on our revenues, income, profitability, liquidity or capital resources, or that would cause the disclosed financial information to be not necessarily indicative of future operating results or financial conditions.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Refer to Part II, Item 7, “Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates” of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023. There have been no material changes to our Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates disclosed therein.
ITEM 3. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK
As a smaller reporting company, we are not required to provide information typically disclosed under this item.
ITEM 4. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
Our management, with the participation of our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures pursuant to Rule 13a-15 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, (the “Exchange Act”), as of the end of the period covered by this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Disclosure controls and procedures are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in by the SEC’s rules and forms, and that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
Based on this evaluation, our chief executive officer and chief financial officer concluded that, as of June 30, 2024, our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective, due to the two material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting as described below.