We are committed to strict adherence to United States and international intellectual property standards. All facilities are equipped with physical security equal to U.S. plants, including card-key/electronic monitoring, bound/numbered research notebooks, 24-hour on-site security, video monitoring throughout the plant site, and motion detectors along all perimeter fence lines. |
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Our success will depend, in part, on our ability to obtain and enforce patents, protect trade secrets, obtain licenses to technology owned by third parties when necessary, and conduct our business without infringing the proprietary rights of others. We have a policy of seeking patent protection for patentable aspects of our proprietary technology. In general, we seek patent protection with respect to products and processes developed in the course of our activities when we believe such protection is in our best interest and when the cost of seeking such protection is not inordinately high.
We may also enter into collaborations or other arrangements with our customers whereby we retain certain ownership rights or may be entitled to receive milestones and royalties with respect to proprietary technology developed by us during the contract period. However, many of our contracts with our customers provide that ownership of proprietary technology developed by us in the course of work performed under the contract is vested in the customer, and we retain little or no ownership interest.
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