that we or our customers are in breach of the terms of applicable licenses, which could, among other things, force us to cease use of such software and give such third party the right to terminate the applicable license or seek damages from us, or both. Additionally, we may not have the right to control the maintenance, prosecution, preparation, filing, enforcement, defense, or litigation of intellectual property that we license from third parties and are reliant on our licensors to do so. We also cannot be certain that activities such as intellectual property protection, maintenance, prosecution, and enforcement by our licensors have been or will be conducted consistent with our best interests or in compliance with applicable laws and regulations or will result in valid and enforceable intellectual property rights. It is possible that our licensors’ infringement proceedings or defense activities may be less vigorous than had we conducted them ourselves or may not be conducted in accordance with our best interests. Furthermore, we cannot be certain that our licensors are not infringing, misappropriating, or otherwise violating the intellectual property rights of third parties or that our licensors have sufficient rights to the licensed intellectual property in all jurisdictions in which we may offer our solutions. Our inability to obtain or maintain certain licenses or other rights, to obtain or maintain such licenses or rights on favorable terms, or the need to engage in litigation or any other proceedings regarding these matters could result in delays in releases of new solutions and could otherwise disrupt our business, until equivalent technology can be identified, licensed, or developed, if at all. Also, to the extent that our platform and solutions depend upon the successful operation of third-party software in conjunction with our software, any undetected errors, vulnerabilities, compromises, or defects in such third-party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our solutions, delay new feature introductions, result in a failure of our platform, and injure our reputation. Any of the foregoing could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If we fail to obtain, maintain, protect, defend, or adequately enforce our intellectual property or proprietary rights, our competitive position could be impaired, and we may lose valuable assets, generate reduced revenue, and incur costly litigation to protect our rights.
We regard the protection of our copyrights, proprietary software, trademarks, domain names, trade secrets, and other intellectual property rights as critical to our success. We rely and expect to continue to rely on a combination of copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and unfair competition laws, as well as confidentiality procedures and agreements, protective covenant agreements, and other contractual protections with our employees, independent contractors, advisers, channel partners, resellers, and customers to protect our trade secrets, proprietary information, and intellectual property rights.
We strive to protect our intellectual property rights by relying on foreign, federal, state, and common law rights, as well as certain contractual restrictions. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property and proprietary rights, including physical, operational, and managerial protections of our confidential information, contractual obligations of confidentiality, assignment agreements with our employees and contractors, license agreements, the prosecution, defense, enforcement, protection, and maintenance of registrations and applications for registration of intellectual property rights, and the defense and enforcement of common law rights require significant resources and may be inadequate. Effective trade secret, copyright, trademark, patent, and domain name protection is expensive to develop and maintain, both in terms of initial and ongoing registration requirements and expenses and the costs of defending and enforcing our rights. Given the costs and expenses of obtaining, maintaining, protecting, exploiting, defending, and enforcing our intellectual property rights, we may choose not to obtain, maintain, protect, exploit, defend, or enforce certain intellectual property rights that later turn out to be important. We cannot guarantee that our efforts to obtain, maintain, protect, exploit, defend, or enforce our intellectual property rights are adequate or that we have secured, or will be able to secure, appropriate permissions or protections for all of the intellectual property rights we use or rely on.
Our registered or unregistered trademarks, trade names, or other intellectual property rights may be challenged, infringed, diluted, circumvented, misappropriated, or otherwise violated or declared invalid or unenforceable or determined to be infringing on or dilutive of other marks. Our domain names and social media handles may also be misappropriated or otherwise misused. Further, at times, competitors may adopt trade names, trademarks, domain names, or social media handles similar to ours, thereby impeding our ability to build,
45