NET Power (NPWR) Risk Analysis

If disputes over licensed intellectual property prevent or impair our ability to maintain the licensing arrangements on acceptable terms, we may be unable to successfully develop and commercialize our technology, or the dispute may have an adverse effect on our results of operation. We, our partners, our licensees and our critical equipment suppliers may need to defend against intellectual property infringement claims, which may negatively impact market demand for our process licenses. Further, defending against intellectual property claims can be time consuming and expensive, and such defense may divert our resources away from our business efforts, regardless of the outcome of these claims. Third parties may hold or obtain patents, trademarks or other proprietary rights that would prevent, limit or interfere with our ability to manufacture, develop or sell our products, and that could make it more difficult for us to operate our business and generate revenue. From time to time, we may receive inquiries from holders of patents or trademarks inquiring whether we are infringing on their proprietary rights and/or seeking court declarations that they do not infringe upon our intellectual property rights. Companies holding patents or other intellectual property rights relating to our technology may bring suits alleging infringement of such rights or otherwise asserting their rights and seeking licenses. In addition, if we are determined to have infringed upon a third party's intellectual property rights, we may be required to do one or more of the following: cease licensing, selling, incorporating or using products that incorporate the challenged intellectual property; pay substantial damages; obtain a license from the holder of the infringed intellectual property right that may not be available on reasonable terms or at all; or redesign our plant technology. In the event of a successful claim of infringement against us and our failure or inability to obtain a license to the infringed technology, our business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. In addition, any litigation or claims, whether or not valid, could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and management's attention.

Third parties may successfully challenge or invalidate our rights or ability to use in-licensed intellectual property that is core to the Net Power Cycle. Competitors or other third parties may infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate our in-licensed issued patents or other intellectual property that we may own. To counter such infringement, misappropriation or other unauthorized use, we may be required to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time-consuming and can divert the time and attention of our management and scientific personnel. Any claims we assert against third parties could provoke these parties to assert counterclaims against us alleging that we infringe, misappropriate, or otherwise violate their patents, trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual property. In addition, our in-licensed patents may become involved in inventorship or priority disputes. Third parties may raise challenges to the validity of certain of our in-licensed patent claims and may in the future raise similar claims before administrative bodies in the U.S. or abroad, even outside the context of litigation. For example, we may be subject to a third-party pre-issuance submission of prior art to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, or we may become involved in derivation, revocation, reexamination, post-grant review, inter partes review and equivalent proceedings in foreign jurisdictions, such as opposition proceedings challenging any patents that we may own or in-license. Such submissions may also be made prior to a patent's issuance, precluding the granting of a patent based on one of our owned or licensed pending patent applications. A third party may also claim that our potential future owned patents or licensed patent rights are invalid or unenforceable in a litigation. The outcome following legal assertions of invalidity and unenforceability is unpredictable. An adverse determination in any such submission, proceeding or litigation could reduce the scope of, invalidate or render unenforceable our potential future owned patents or licensed patent rights, allow third parties to commercialize the Net Power Cycle or related technologies and compete directly with us without payment to us, or such adverse determination could result in our inability to manufacture or commercialize products without infringing third-party patent rights. In a patent infringement proceeding, there is a risk that a court will decide that a patent we in-license is invalid or unenforceable, in whole or in part, and that we do not have the right to stop the other party from using the invention at issue. There is also a risk that, even if the validity of such patents is upheld, the court will construe the patent's claims narrowly or decide that we do not have the right to stop the other party from using the invention at issue on the grounds that our in-licensed patents do not cover the invention. An adverse outcome in a litigation or proceeding involving our in-licensed patents could limit our ability to assert our in-licensed patents against those parties or other competitors and may curtail or preclude our ability to exclude third parties from making and selling similar or competitive products. Similarly, in the future, we expect to rely on trademarks to distinguish the Net Power Cycle or related technologies, and if we assert trademark infringement claims, a court may determine that the marks we have asserted are invalid or unenforceable or that the party against whom we have asserted trademark infringement has superior rights to the marks in question. In this case, we could ultimately be forced to cease use of such trademarks. In any infringement litigation, any award of monetary damages we receive may not be commercially valuable. Furthermore, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property litigation, there is a risk that some of our confidential information could be compromised by disclosure during litigation. In addition, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments, and, if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our securities. Moreover, there can be no assurance that we will have sufficient financial or other resources to adequately file and pursue such infringement claims, which typically last for years before they are concluded. Some of our competitors and other third parties may be able to sustain the costs of such litigation or proceedings more effectively than we can because of their greater financial resources and more mature and developed intellectual property portfolios. Even if we ultimately prevail in such claims, the monetary cost of such litigation and the diversion of the attention of our management and scientific personnel could outweigh any benefit we receive as a result of the proceedings. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing, misappropriating or successfully challenging our intellectual property rights. Uncertainties resulting from the initiation and continuation of patent litigation or other proceedings could have a negative impact on our ability to compete in the marketplace, and that could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and prospects.

We may lose our rights to some or all of the core intellectual property that is in-licensed by way of either the licensor not paying renewal fees or maintenance fees, or by way of third parties challenging the validity of the intellectual property, thereby resulting in competitors easily entering into the same market and decreasing the revenue that we may receive from our customers, and this may adversely affect our ability to develop, market, and license our technology. Because our technology requires the use of proprietary rights held by third parties, the growth of our business will likely depend in part on our ability to continue to in-license these proprietary rights. Licensing intellectual property involves complex legal, business and scientific issues. If we are not able to maintain such licenses, or if we fail to obtain any future necessary licenses on commercially reasonable terms or with sufficient breadth to cover the intended use of third-party intellectual property, our business could be materially harmed. Further, if our licensors lose their licenses, whether due to not paying renewal or maintenance fees, third parties challenging the validity or otherwise, we would also lose rights to the covered intellectual property, and such loss could also materially harm our business.

We, our partners or our licensees may not identify relevant third-party patents or may incorrectly interpret the relevance, scope or expiration of a third-party patent, and such failure to identify or correctly interpret the patent may adversely affect our ability to develop, market, and license our technology. We cannot guarantee that any of our patent searches or analyses, including the identification of relevant patents, the scope of patent claims, or the expiration of relevant patents, are complete or thorough nor can we be certain that we have identified each and every third-party patent and pending application in the U.S. and abroad that is relevant to or necessary for the commercialization of our technology in any jurisdiction. 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, and such incorrect interpretation may negatively impact our ability to market our products. We may incorrectly determine that our products 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. In addition, because patent applications can take many years to issue, there may be currently pending applications unknown to us that may later result in issued patents upon which our technology may infringe. Our determination of the expiration date of any patent in the U.S. or abroad that we consider relevant may be incorrect, and such incorrect determination may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our technology. Our failure to identify and correctly interpret relevant patents may negatively impact our ability to develop and market our products.

A number of foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as the U.S., and, so, our intellectual property rights may not be as strong or as easily enforced outside of the U.S. Patent, trademark and trade secret laws are geographical in scope and vary throughout the world. Some foreign countries do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as do the laws of the U.S. In addition, trade secrets and know-how can be difficult to protect and some courts inside and outside the U.S. are less willing or unwilling to protect trade secrets and know-how. 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 materially and adversely harmed. Further, even if we engaged local counsel in key foreign jurisdictions, policing the unauthorized use of its intellectual property in foreign jurisdictions may be difficult or impossible. Therefore, our intellectual property rights may not be as strong or as easily enforced outside of the U.S., and efforts to protect against the infringement, misappropriation, or unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights, technology, and other proprietary rights may be difficult and costly outside of the U.S. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain, and any changes in, or unexpected interpretations of, intellectual property laws may compromise our ability to enforce our patent rights, trade secrets and other intellectual property rights.

We maintain certain technology as trade secrets and others could independently develop competing or similar technologies, allowing others to develop plants without our license if our other intellectual property rights are insufficient to prevent such unlicensed development and deployment of plants. We currently rely, and intend to rely in the future, on trade secrets, know-how, and technology that are not protected by patents to maintain our competitive position. We may not be able to protect our trade secrets, know-how, and other internally developed information adequately. Although we use reasonable efforts to protect this internally developed information and technology, our employees, consultants, and other parties (including independent contractors and companies with which we conduct business) may unintentionally or willfully disclose our information or technology to competitors. Moreover, third parties may independently develop similar or equivalent proprietary information or otherwise gain access to our trade secrets, know-how, and other internally developed information. Enforcing a claim that a third party illegally disclosed or obtained and is using any of our internally developed information or technology is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is unpredictable. We rely, in part, on non-disclosure, confidentiality, and assignment-of-invention agreements with our employees, independent contractors, consultants, and companies with which we conduct business to protect our internally developed information. These agreements may not be self-executing or they may be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for such breach. These agreements may be found by a court to be unenforceable or invalid. We may fail to enforce our agreements in court if we are compelled to present them as evidence but are unable to locate and provide copies. Moreover, when employees with knowledge of our trade secrets and confidential information leave us and join new employers, it may be difficult or impossible for us to detect or prove misappropriation of our confidential information and trade secrets by the former employee and/or the former employee's new employer. In addition, others may independently discover trade secrets and proprietary information, and, in such cases, we could not assert any trade secret rights against such party. Costly and time-consuming litigation could be necessary to enforce and determine the scope of our proprietary rights, and failure to obtain or maintain trade secret protection could adversely affect our competitive position, business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our patent applications may not result in issued patents and our patent rights may be contested, circumvented, invalidated, or limited in scope, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our ability to prevent others from interfering with commercialization of our technology. Our patent applications may not result in issued patents, and not having such patents may have a material adverse effect on our ability to prevent others from commercially exploiting products similar to ours. The status of patents involves complex legal and factual questions, and the breadth of claims allowed is uncertain. As a result, we cannot be certain that any patent applications we have or will file will result in patents being issued or that our patents and any patents that may be issued to us will afford protection against competitors with similar technology. Numerous patents and pending patent applications owned by others exist in the fields in which we have developed and are developing our technology. In addition to those who may have patents or patent applications directed to relevant technology with an effective filing date earlier than any of our existing patents or pending patent applications, any of our existing or pending patents may also be challenged by others on the basis that they are otherwise invalid or unenforceable. Furthermore, patent applications filed in foreign countries are subject to laws, rules and procedures that differ from those of the U.S., and, thus, we cannot be certain that foreign patent applications related to issued U.S. patents will be issued. Even if our patent applications succeed and even if we are issued patents in accordance with them, it is still uncertain whether these patents will be contested, circumvented, invalidated or limited in scope in the future. The rights granted under any issued patents may not provide us with meaningful protection or competitive advantages, and some foreign countries provide significantly less effective patent enforcement than in the U.S. In addition, the claims under any patents that issue from our patent applications may not be broad enough to prevent others from developing technologies that are similar to ours or that achieve results similar to ours. The intellectual property rights of others could also bar us from licensing and exploiting any patents that issue from our pending applications. In addition, patents issued to us may be infringed upon or designed around by others, and others may obtain patents that we need to license or design around, either of which would increase costs and may adversely affect our business, prospects, financial condition and operating results.