Symantec 2006 Annual Report Download - page 28

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ment's attention from the day-to-day operations of our business, which could adversely affect our business,
results of operations, and cash flows. In addition, an unfavorable outcome in such litigation could negatively
impact our business, results of operations, and cash flows.
Third parties claiming that we infringe their proprietary rights could cause us to incur significant legal
expenses and prevent us from selling our products.
From time to time, we receive claims that we have infringed the intellectual property rights of others,
including claims regarding patents, copyrights, and trademarks. In addition, former employers of our former,
current, or future employees may assert claims that such employees have improperly disclosed to us the
confidential or proprietary information of these former employers. Any such claim, with or without merit,
could result in costly litigation and distract management from day-to-day operations. If we are not successful
in defending such claims, we could be required to stop selling, delay shipments of or redesign our products, pay
monetary amounts as damages, enter into royalty or licensing arrangements, or satisfy indemnification
obligations that we have with some of our customers.
In addition, we license and use software from third parties in our business. These third party software
licenses may not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms or at all, and may expose us to additional
liability. This liability, or our inability to use any of this third party software, could result in shipment delays or
other disruptions in our business that could materially and adversely affect our operating results.
If we do not protect our proprietary information and prevent third parties from making unauthorized use
of our products and technology, our financial results could be harmed.
Our software and underlying technology are proprietary. We seek to protect our proprietary rights through
a combination of confidentiality agreements and procedures and through copyright, patent, trademark, and
trade secret laws. However, all of these measures afford only limited protection and may be challenged,
invalidated, or circumvented by third parties. Third parties may copy all or portions of our products or
otherwise obtain, use, distribute, and sell our proprietary information without authorization. Third parties may
also develop similar or superior technology independently, by designing around our patents. Our shrink-wrap
license agreements are not signed by licensees and therefore may be unenforceable under the laws of some
jurisdictions. Furthermore, the laws of some foreign countries do not offer the same level of protection of our
proprietary rights as the laws of the U.S., and we may be subject to unauthorized use of our products in those
countries. The unauthorized copying or use of our products or proprietary information could result in reduced
sales of our products. Any legal action to protect proprietary information that we may bring or be engaged in
with a strategic partner or vendor could adversely affect our ability to access software, operating system, and
hardware platforms of such partner or vendor, or cause such partner or vendor to choose not to offer our
products to their customers. In addition, any legal action to protect proprietary information that we may bring
or be engaged in, alone or through our alliances with the Business Software Alliance (BSA), or the
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), could be costly, may distract management from day-to-
day operations, and may lead to additional claims against us, which could adversely affect our operating
results.
Some of our products contain ""open source'' software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or
more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business.
Certain of our products are distributed with software licensed by its authors or other third parties under
so-called ""open source'' licenses, which may include, by way of example the GNU General Public License
(GPL), GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), the Mozilla Public License, the BSD License, and
the Apache License. Some of these licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for
modifications or derivative works we create based upon the open source software, and that we license such
modifications or derivative works under the terms of a particular open source license or other license granting
third parties certain rights of further use. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in
a certain manner, we could, under certain of the open source licenses, be required to release the source code of
our proprietary software. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can
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