issue. Therefore, patent applications covering our products and product candidates could have been filed by others without our knowledge. Additionally, pending patent applications that have been published can, subject to certain limitations, be later amended in a manner that could cover our current and future products and product candidates, or the use thereof, provided such pending patent applications result in issued patents. Our ability to develop and market our current and future products and product candidate can be adversely affected in jurisdictions where such patents are issued.
The scope of a patent claim is determined by an interpretation of the law, the written disclosure in a patent and the patent’s prosecution history. Our interpretation of the relevance or the scope of a patent or a pending application may be incorrect, which may negatively impact our ability to market our products or, if approved, product candidates. We may incorrectly determine that our products or product candidates are not covered by a third-party patent or may incorrectly predict whether a third-party’s pending application will issue with claims of relevant scope. Our determination of the expiration date of any patent in the United States or abroad that we consider relevant may be incorrect and we may incorrectly conclude that a third-party patent is invalid or unenforceable. Our failure to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our current and future products and, if approved, product candidates.
If we fail to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents, we may be subject to infringement claims. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to successfully settle or otherwise resolve such infringement claims. If we fail in any such dispute, in addition to being forced to pay damages, we may be temporarily or permanently prohibited from commercializing any of our products or, if approved, product candidates, that are held to be infringing. We might, if possible, also be forced to redesign products or product candidates so that we no longer infringe the third-party intellectual property rights. Any of these events, even if we were ultimately to prevail, could require us to divert substantial financial and management resources that we would otherwise be able to devote to our business.
We may be involved in lawsuits to protect or enforce our patents, the patents of our licensors or our other intellectual property rights, which could be expensive, time consuming and unsuccessful.
Competitors may infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate our patents, the patents of our licensors or our other intellectual property rights. To counter infringement or unauthorized use, we may be required to file and prosecute legal claims against one or more third parties, which can be expensive and time-consuming, even if ultimately successful. For example, in February 2022, Roivant’s subsidiary, Genevant Sciences, and Arbutus Biopharma Corporation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Moderna, Inc. and an affiliate seeking damages for infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 8,058,069, 8,492,359, 8,822,668, 9,364,435, 9,504,651, and 11,141,378 in the manufacture and sale of MRNA-1273, Moderna’s vaccine for COVID-19 (the “Moderna Action”). In addition, in March 2022, Acuitas Therapeutics Inc. filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma Corporation seeking a declaratory judgment that U.S. Patents 8,058,069, 8,492,359, 8,822,668, 9,006,417, 9,364,435, 9,404,127, 9,504,651, 9,518,272, and 11,141,378 are not infringed by the manufacture, use, offer for sale, sale or importation into the United States of COMIRNATY, Pfizer’s and BioNTech’s vaccine for COVID-19 and are otherwise invalid (the “Acuitas Action”).
In an infringement proceeding, a court may decide that a patent of ours or our licensors is not valid or is unenforceable, or may refuse to stop the other party from using the technology at issue on the grounds that our patents do not cover the technology in question. The standards that courts use to interpret patents are not always applied predictably or uniformly and can change, particularly as new technologies develop. As a result, we cannot predict with certainty how much protection, if any, will be given to our patents if we attempt to enforce them and they are challenged in court and if any such suits, including the Moderna Action and the Acuitas Action, will ultimately be resolved successfully. Further, even if we prevail against an infringer in U.S. district court, there is always the risk that the infringer will file an appeal and the district court judgment will be overturned at the appeals court and/or that an adverse decision will be issued by the appeals court relating to the validity or enforceability of our patents. An adverse result in any litigation or defense proceedings could put one or more of our patents at risk of being invalidated or interpreted narrowly in a manner insufficient to achieve our business objectives, or could put our patent applications at risk of not issuing. The initiation of a claim against a third-party may also cause the third-party to bring counter claims against us such as claims asserting that our patents are invalid or unenforceable. In patent litigation in the United States, defendant counterclaims alleging invalidity or unenforceability are commonplace. Grounds for a validity challenge could be an alleged failure to meet any of several statutory requirements, including lack of novelty, obviousness, non-enablement or lack of written description or non-statutory subject matter. Grounds for an unenforceability assertion could be an allegation that someone connected with prosecution of the patent withheld relevant material information from the USPTO, or made a materially misleading statement, during prosecution. Third parties may also raise similar validity claims before the USPTO in post-grant proceedings such as ex parte reexaminations, inter partes review, or post-grant review, or oppositions or similar proceedings outside the United States, in parallel with litigation or even outside the context of litigation. The outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability is unpredictable. We cannot be certain that there is no invalidating prior art, of which we and the patent examiner were unaware during prosecution. For the patents and patent applications that we have licensed, we may have limited or no right to participate in the defense of any licensed patents against challenge by a