Citrix 2012 Annual Report Download - page 28

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24
• an increase in the number of competitors in our industry segments and the resulting increase in the number of
related products and services and the overlap in the functionality of those products and services;
• an increase in the number of competitors in our industry segments and the resulting increase in the number of
related products and services and the overlap in the functionality of those products and services;
• an increase in the risk that our competitors and third parties could use their own intellectual property rights to limit
our freedom to operate and exploit our products, or to otherwise block us from taking full advantage of our
markets;
• our products and services may rely on the technology of others and, therefore, require us to obtain intellectual
property licenses from third parties in order for us to commercialize our products or services and we may not be
able to obtain or continue to obtain licenses from these third parties on reasonable terms; and
• the unauthorized use of third-party code in our product development process.
Companies and inventors are more frequently seeking to patent software. As a result, we could receive more patent
infringement claims. Responding to any infringement claim, regardless of its validity or merit, could result in costly litigation.
Further, intellectual property litigation could compel us to do one or more of the following:
• pay damages (including the potential for treble damages), license fees or royalties (including royalties for past
periods) to the party claiming infringement;
• stop licensing products or providing services that use the challenged intellectual property;
• obtain a license from the owner of the infringed intellectual property to sell or use the relevant technology, which
license may not be available on reasonable terms, or at all; or
• redesign the challenged technology, which could be time consuming and costly, or not be accomplished.
If we were compelled to take any of these actions, our business, results of operations or financial condition may suffer.
Our use of “open source” software could negatively impact our ability to sell our products and subject us to possible
litigation.
The products or technologies acquired, licensed or developed by us may incorporate so-called “open source” software,
and we may incorporate open source software into other products in the future. Such open source software is generally licensed
by its authors or other third parties under open source licenses, including, for example, the GNU General Public License, the
GNU Lesser General Public License, “Apache-style” licenses, “Berkeley Software Distribution,” “BSD-style” licenses, and
other open source licenses. We monitor our use of open source software in an effort to avoid subjecting our products to
conditions we do not intend. Although we believe that we have complied with our obligations under the various applicable
licenses for open source software that we use such that we have not triggered any of these conditions, there is little or no legal
precedent governing the interpretation of many of the terms of these types of licenses. As a result, the potential impact of these
terms on our business may result in unanticipated obligations regarding our products and technologies, such as requirements
that we offer our products that use the open source software for no cost, that we make available source code for modifications
or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software, and/or that we license such
modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license.
If an author or other third party that distributes open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the
conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such
allegations. If our defenses were not successful, we could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the distribution of
our products that contained open source software, and required to comply with the terms of the applicable license, which could
disrupt the distribution and sale of some of our products. In addition, if we combine our proprietary software with open source
software in an unintended manner, under some open source licenses we could be required to publicly release the source code of
our proprietary software.
In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of
third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or assurance of title or controls
on the origin of the software.
If open source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, do not continue to develop and enhance the open
source technologies we utilize, we may be unable to develop Cloud Platform products, adequately enhance our existing
cloud products or meet customer requirements for innovation, quality and price of cloud products.
We rely to a significant degree on an informal community of independent open source software programmers to develop
and enhance the Xen hypervisor, which is the heart of the XenServer virtualization product. Similarly, a small community of
software developers are primarily responsible for the development and enhancement of the open source CloudStack platform. If
these programmers fail to adequately further develop and enhance our open source technologies, we would need to further