EBay (EBAY)

Intellectual Property

We regard the protection of our intellectual property as critical to our success. We have entered into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and contractors, and nondisclosure agreements with parties with whom we conduct business in order to limit access to and disclosure of our proprietary information.

We aggressively protect our intellectual property rights by relying on federal, state and common law rights, as well as a variety of administrative procedures. We actively pursue the registration of our trademarks, copyrights, patents and domain names in the U.S. and international jurisdictions. The expansion of our business has required us to protect our trademarks, patents and domain names in an increasing number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive, may require litigation, and may not be successful in every location. We have registered our core brands as trademarks and domain names in the U.S. and a large number of other jurisdictions and have in place an active program to continue to secure trademarks and domain names that correspond to our brands in markets of interest. If we are unable to secure our trademarks or domain names, we could be adversely affected in any jurisdiction in which our trademarks or domain names are not registered.

Third parties have from time to time claimed, and others may claim in the future, that we have infringed their intellectual property rights. We currently are involved in several such legal proceedings. Please see the information in “Item 3: Legal Proceedings” and in “Item 1A: Risk Factors” under the captions “We are subject to patent litigation” and “We may be unable to protect or enforce our own intellectual property rights adequately.”