LinkedIn 2015 Annual Report Download - page 36

We may not be able to halt the operations of online services that aggregate our data as well as
data from other companies, including social networks, or copycat online services that have
misappropriated our data in the past or may misappropriate our data in the future. These
activities could harm our brand and our business.
From time to time, third parties have accessed data from our networks through scraping, robots or
other means and used this data or aggregated this data on their online services with other data. In
addition, ‘‘copycat’’ online services have misappropriated data on our network and attempted to imitate
our brand or the functionality of our services, and these services or others could use similar tactics to
develop products that compete with ours. These activities could degrade our brand, negatively impact
our website performance and harm our business. When we have become aware of such online
services, in many instances we have employed contractual, technological or legal measures in an
attempt to halt unauthorized activities, but these measures may not be successful. In addition, if our
customers do not comply with our terms of service, they also may be able to abuse our products and
services and provide access to our solutions to unauthorized users. However, we may not be able to
detect any or all of these types of activities in a timely manner and, even if we could, technological and
legal measures may be insufficient to stop their operations. In some cases, particularly in the case of
online services operating from outside of the United States, our available legal remedies may not be
adequate to protect our business against such activities. Regardless of whether we can successfully
enforce our rights against these parties, any measures that we may take could require us to expend
significant financial or other resources.
Failure to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights could harm our business and
operating results.
We regard the protection of our trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, trade dress, databases,
domain names and patents as critical to our success. We strive to protect our intellectual property
rights by relying on federal, state and common law rights and other rights provided under foreign laws.
These laws are subject to change at any time and could further restrict our ability to protect our
intellectual property rights. In addition, the existing laws of certain foreign countries in which we operate
may not protect our intellectual property rights to the same extent as do the laws of the United States.
We also have a practice of entering into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our
employees and contractors, and often enter into confidentiality agreements with parties with whom we
conduct business in order to limit access to, and disclosure and use of, our proprietary information. In
addition, from time to time we make our intellectual property rights available to others under license
agreements. However, these contractual arrangements and the other steps we have taken to protect
our intellectual property rights may not prevent the misappropriation of our proprietary information,
infringement of our intellectual property rights or deter independent development of similar or competing
technologies by others and may not provide an adequate remedy in the event of such misappropriation
or infringement.
Obtaining and maintaining effective intellectual property rights is expensive, including the costs of
defending our rights. We are seeking to protect our trademarks and patents, and other intellectual
property rights in a number of jurisdictions, a process that is expensive and may not be successful in
all jurisdictions for every such right. Even where we have such rights, they may later be found to be
unenforceable or have a limited scope of enforceability. In addition, we may not seek to pursue such
protection in every location. In particular, we believe it is important to maintain, protect and enhance
our brands. Accordingly, we pursue the registration of domain names and our trademarks and service
marks in the United States and in many locations outside the United States. We have already and may,
over time, increase our investment in protecting innovations through investments in patents and similar
rights, and this process is expensive and time-consuming.
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