Go Daddy 2015 Annual Report Download - page 22

Table of Contents
how we would be affected. Laws and regulations in the United States or in foreign jurisdictions may be applied in new or different manners in pending or future
litigation. Further, other existing bodies of law, including the criminal laws of various jurisdictions, may be deemed to apply to our activities, or new statutes or
regulations may be adopted in the future.
Intellectual Property and Proprietary Rights
Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are important to our business. We rely on a combination of trademark, patent, copyright and trade secret laws,
confidentiality and access-related procedures and safeguards and contractual provisions to protect our proprietary technologies, confidential information, brands
and other intellectual property.
We have also developed, acquired or licensed proprietary technologies for use in our business. As of December 31, 2015 we had 164 issued patents in the
United States covering various aspects of our product offerings. Additionally, as of December 31, 2015 , we had 211 pending U.S. patent applications and intend to
file additional patent applications in the future.
We have non-disclosure, confidentiality and license agreements with employees, contractors, customers and other third parties, which limit access to and use
of our proprietary information. Though we rely in part upon these legal and contractual protections, as well as various procedural safeguards, we believe the skill
and ingenuity of our employees, the functionality and frequent enhancements to our solutions and our ability to introduce new products and features meeting the
needs of our customers are more important to maintaining our competitive position in the marketplace.
We have an ongoing trademark and service mark registration program pursuant to which we register our brand names and product names, taglines and logos
in the United States and other countries to the extent we determine appropriate and cost-effective. We also have common law rights in some unregistered
trademarks that were established over years of use. In addition, we have a trademark and service mark enforcement program pursuant to which we monitor
applications filed by third parties to register trademarks and service marks that may be confusingly similar to ours, as well as the use of our major brand names in
social media, domain names and other Internet sites.
Despite our efforts to preserve and protect our intellectual property, unauthorized third parties may attempt to copy, reverse engineer or otherwise obtain
access to our proprietary rights, and competitors may attempt to develop solutions that could compete with us in the markets we serve. Unauthorized disclosure of
our confidential information or proprietary technologies by our employees or third parties could also occur. The risk of unauthorized use of our proprietary and
intellectual property rights may increase as we continue to expand outside of the United States.
Third-party infringement claims are also possible in our industry, especially as functionality and features expand, evolve and overlap across industries. Third
parties, including non-practicing patent holders, have from time to time claimed, and could claim in the future, that our processes, technologies or websites infringe
patents they now hold or might obtain or be issued in the future.
Employees
As of December 31, 2015 , we had 4,761 employees worldwide, including 3,243 in our Customer Care team, 811 in technology and development, 132 in
marketing and advertising and 575 in general and administrative. Excluded from our employee figures are more than 600 Customer Care specialists located in
India and Belfast, Ireland who are directly employed by third-party partners, but who are devoted to GoDaddy on a full time basis. Substantially all of our
employees are based in the United States. None of our employees is represented by a labor union or is party to any collective bargaining agreement in connection
with his or her employment with us.
17