our business and sales outside the United States and to the public sector, we may engage with business partners and third-party intermediaries to market our services and to obtain for us the necessary permits, licenses, and other regulatory approvals. In addition, we or our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities. We can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities.
Detecting, investigating, and resolving actual or alleged violations of anti-corruption laws can require a significant diversion of time, resources, and attention from senior management. In addition, noncompliance with anti-corruption, anti-bribery, or anti-money laundering laws could subject us to whistleblower complaints, investigations, prosecution, enforcement actions, sanctions, settlements, fines, damages, other civil or criminal penalties or injunctions, suspension or debarment from contracting with certain persons, reputational harm, adverse media coverage, and other collateral consequences. If any subpoenas or investigations are launched, or governmental or other sanctions are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal proceeding, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed. In addition, responding to any action will likely result in a materially significant diversion of 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.