Any significant changes to the taxation of our activities discussed above could increase our future worldwide effective tax rate or non-income taxes that may result in a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, or cash flows. Such changes may also apply retroactively to our historical operations and result in taxes greater than the amounts estimated and recorded in our financial statements.
We may have exposure to greater than anticipated tax liabilities.
Our tax obligations, including income and non-income taxes, are based in part on our corporate operating structure and intercompany arrangements, including the manner in which we develop, value, manage, protect and use our intellectual property and the valuation of our intercompany transactions. The tax laws applicable to our business, including the laws of the U.S. and other jurisdictions, are subject to interpretation and certain jurisdictions are aggressively interpreting their laws in new ways in an effort to raise additional tax revenue. In the third quarter of 2020, we made changes to our international structure including migrating certain intellectual property back to the United States in order to align the global economic ownership of the intellectual property with our current and future business operations. Our current and historical corporate structure and intercompany arrangements have been implemented in a manner we believe is in compliance with current prevailing tax laws. However, the taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may challenge our methodologies for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, which could impact our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our financial position and results of operations. In addition, future changes to our corporate structure and intercompany agreements, including through acquisitions, could impact our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our financial position and results of operations.
Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
Failure to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights or the costs involved in such enforcement could harm our business, financial condition or results of operations.
We regard the protection of our trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade dress, domain names, patents, and other product rights as critical to our success. We strive to protect our intellectual property rights by relying on federal, state and common law rights, as well as contractual restrictions and business practices. We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and contractors and confidentiality agreements with parties with whom we conduct business in order to limit access to, and disclosure and use of, our proprietary information. However, these contractual arrangements and business practices may not prevent the misappropriation of our proprietary information or deter independent development of similar technologies by others.
We pursue the registration of our copyrights, trademarks, service marks, domain names, and patents in the U.S. and in certain locations outside the U.S. This process can be expensive and time-consuming, may not always be successful depending on local laws or other circumstances, and we also may choose not to pursue registrations in every location depending on the nature of the project to which the intellectual property rights pertain. We may, over time, increase our investments in protecting our creative works.
Litigation may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property rights, protect our trade secrets or determine the validity and scope of proprietary rights claimed by others. For example, we have brought actions to protect our “Zynga Poker,” “Ville,” and “With Friends” franchises against third-party uses of those intellectual property assets and brands. Any litigation of this nature, regardless of outcome or merit, could result in substantial costs, adverse publicity, and diversion of management and technical resources, any of which could adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. If we fail to maintain, protect and enhance our intellectual property rights, our business, financial condition or results of operations may be harmed.
We are, and may in the future be, subject to intellectual property disputes, which are costly to defend and could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies in the future.
From time to time, we have faced, and we may face in the future, allegations that we have infringed the trademarks, copyrights, patents and other intellectual property rights of third parties, including from our competitors, non-practicing entities and former employers of our personnel. Intellectual property litigation may be protracted and expensive, and the results are difficult to predict. As the result of any court judgment or settlement, we may be obligated to cancel the launch of a new game, stop offering a game or certain features of a game in a particular geographic region or worldwide, pay royalties or significant settlement costs, purchase licenses or modify our games and features, or develop substitutes.
In addition, we use open source software in our game development and expect to continue to use open source software in the future. From time to time, we may face claims from companies that incorporate open source software into their products, claiming ownership of, or demanding release of, the source code, the open source software and/or derivative works that were developed using such software, or otherwise seeking to enforce the terms of the applicable open source license. These claims could also result in litigation, require us to purchase a costly license or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our games, any of which would have a negative effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. See the section titled “Legal Matters” included in Note 15 - “Commitments and Contingencies” in the notes to the consolidated financial statements included in the Zynga Form 10-K.
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