VMware 2013 Annual Report Download - page 12

Table of Contents
competitors have in the past, and may in the future, take advantage of their existing relationships with our business partners to engage in business practices
such as support, distribution and license restrictions that make our products less attractive to our channel partners and end users.
Additionally, information technology companies are also increasingly seeking to deliver top-to-bottom IT solutions to end users that combine enterprise-
level hardware and software solutions that can offer alternatives to our cloud computing, end-user computing and virtualization platform. In addition,
competitors who have existing relationships with our current or prospective end users could integrate competitive capabilities into their existing products and
make them available without additional charge. Many of our current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, a
larger customer base and significantly greater financial, technical, sales and marketing and other resources than we do. Overall however, we believe our
market position, large virtualization customer base, strong network of partners and indirect sales, broad and innovative solutions suite, and platform-agnostic
approach position us to compete effectively.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2013, approximately 400 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office have been granted or assigned to us. We
also have been granted or assigned patents from other countries. These patents cover various aspects of our server virtualization and other technologies. The
granted United States patents will expire beginning in 2018, with the last patent expiring in 2032. We also have numerous pending United States provisional
and non-
provisional patent applications, and numerous pending foreign and international patent applications, that cover other aspects of our virtualization and
other technologies.
We have federal trademark registrations in the United States for “VMWARE,” “VMWORLD,” “VMWARE FUSION,” “VSPHERE,” “VMWARE
VCLOUD,” “VMWARE VIEW,” “VMOTION” and numerous other trademarks. We have also registered trademarks in a number of foreign countries.
We rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as confidentiality
procedures and contractual provisions to protect our intellectual property rights and our brand.
We enforce our intellectual property rights in the United States and a number of foreign countries. Despite our efforts, the steps we have taken to protect
our proprietary rights may not be adequate to preclude misappropriation of our proprietary information or infringement of our intellectual property rights, and
our ability to police such misappropriation or infringement is uncertain, particularly in countries outside of the United States. United States patent filings are
intended to provide the holder with a right to exclude others from making, using, offering to sell, selling or importing into the United States products covered
by the claims of granted patents.
Our granted United States patents, and any future patents (to the extent they are issued), may be contested, circumvented or invalidated in the future.
Moreover, the rights granted under any issued patents may not provide us with proprietary protection or competitive advantages, and we may not be able to
prevent third parties from infringing these patents. Therefore, the exact effect of our patents and the other steps we have taken to protect our intellectual
property cannot be predicted with certainty.
Employees
As of December 31, 2013, we had approximately 14,300 employees in offices worldwide, less than 5% of which were contracted through EMC. None of
our employees are represented by labor unions, and we consider current employee relations to be good.
We contract with EMC to utilize personnel who are dedicated to work for VMware on a full-time basis. These individuals are located in countries in
which we do not currently have an operating subsidiary and are predominantly dedicated to our sales and marketing efforts. We use contractors from time to
time for temporary assignments and in locations in which we do not currently have operating subsidiaries. In the event that these contractor resources were
not available, we do not believe that this would have a material adverse effect on our operations.
Available Information
Our website is located at www.vmware.com, and our investor relations website is located at http://ir.vmware.com. Our goal is to maintain the Investor
Relations website as a portal through which investors can easily find or navigate to pertinent information about us, all of which is made available free of
charge, including:
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• our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and any amendments to those reports, as soon as
reasonably practicable after we electronically file that material with or furnish it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”);
•
announcements of investor conferences, speeches and events at which our executives talk about our products, services and competitive strategies;