10x Genomics, Inc. 10-Q

Item 1. Legal Proceedings. We are regularly subject to claims, lawsuits, arbitration proceedings, administrative actions and other legal and regulatory proceedings involving commercial disputes, competition, intellectual property disputes and other matters, and we may become subject to additional types of claims, lawsuits, arbitration proceedings, administrative actions, government investigations and legal and regulatory proceedings in the future and as our business grows, including proceedings related to product liability or our acquisitions, securities issuances or our business practices, including public disclosures about our business. Our success depends in part on our non-infringement of the patents or proprietary rights of third parties. In the past, third parties have asserted and may in the future assert that we are employing their proprietary technology without authorization. We have been involved in multiple patent litigation matters and other proceedings in the past and we expect that given the litigious history of our industry and the high profile of operating as a public company, third parties may claim that our products infringe their intellectual property rights. We have also initiated litigation to defend our technology including technology developed through our significant investments in research and development. It is our general policy not to license our patents but to protect our sole right to own and practice them. There are inherent uncertainties in these legal matters, some of which are beyond management’s control, making the ultimate outcomes difficult to predict. On May 6, 2021, we filed suit against Nanostring Technologies, Inc. ("Nanostring") in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware alleging that Nanostring's GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler and associated instruments and reagents infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 10,472,669, 10,662,467, 10,961,566, 10,983,113, and 10,996,219. On May 19, 2021, we filed an amended complaint additionally alleging that the GeoMx products infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 11,001,878 and 11,008,607. On July 1, 2021, Nanostring filed a motion to dismiss. Briefing is complete and a hearing has been scheduled for November 17, 2021. Discovery has just commenced; no case schedule has been set. For further discussion of the risks relating to intellectual property and our pending litigation, see the section titled “ Risk Factors—Risks related to litigation and our intellectual property ” under Item 1A below.