Vistaprint 2012 Annual Report Download - page 15

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Intellectual Property
We seek to protect our proprietary rights through a combination of patent, copyright, trade secret, and
trademark law and contractual restrictions, such as confidentiality agreements and proprietary rights agreements.
We enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements with our employees, consultants and business
partners, and control access to and distribution of our proprietary information.
We currently hold 83 issued patents worldwide, and we continue to file new patent applications around the
world. Subject to our continued payment of required patent maintenance fees, our currently issued patents will
expire between December 2017 and May 2030. Our primary brand is “Vistaprint,” and we hold trademark
registrations for the Vistaprint trademark in 38 jurisdictions, including registrations in our major markets in North
America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. We also hold trademarks for other brands through which we do business in
jurisdictions worldwide.
The content of our websites and our downloadable software tools are copyrighted materials protected
under international copyright laws and conventions. These materials are further protected by the Terms of Use
posted on each of our websites, which customers acknowledge and accept during the purchase process. We
currently own or control a number of Internet domain names used in connection with our various websites, including
Vistaprint.com and related names. Most of our localized sites use local country code domain names, such as
Vistaprint.it for our Italian site.
From time to time, we are involved in lawsuits or disputes in which third parties claim that we have violated
their intellectual property rights. In addition, a third party may claim that we have improperly obtained or used its
confidential or proprietary information. You can find more information about the risks relating to our intellectual
property rights in Item 1A of Part I, “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report.
Mass Customization Manufacturing
Our high-volume, standardized, scalable production processes are driven by sophisticated proprietary
software described above. Our technologies are designed to readily scale as the number of orders received per day
increases. As more individual print jobs are received, similar jobs can be aggregated and moved to the printing
system more efficiently, thereby optimizing the use of the printing capacity and increasing overall system
throughput. Our proprietary workflow and production management software allows us to deliver final products to
customers in as few as two days. We believe that our strategy of seeking to automate and systematize our service
and production systems enables us to reach and serve small-scale customers more effectively than our
competitors.
With the improvements we have made in automating the design and production process, we can produce
and ship an order the same day we send it to production, which results in minimal inventory levels and reduced
working capital requirements. We can also produce complementary custom products in a timely fashion, allowing us
to produce and deliver multi-part orders quickly and efficiently. This allows us to produce high-quality, low-priced
products at high margins even though our average order values are low by traditional standards.
As orders are received, we automatically route production jobs, often aggregated by our VistaBridge
technology, to the type and location of production system that is most appropriate and cost efficient for the type of
product ordered. Printed paper products ordered in larger quantities, such as business cards, postcards, letterhead
and the like, are typically produced using a single pass on state of the art automated, high-volume, offset,
professional quality printing presses. Products produced in smaller quantities or using special materials, such as
holiday cards, apparel, signage, invitations, return address labels, photo books and magnets, are typically produced
on digital equipment. In most cases, individual orders from multiple customers are aggregated to create larger jobs,
allowing multiple orders to be simultaneously produced.
Our proprietary Viper software and sophisticated automation solutions combined with software from our
suppliers allow us to integrate and automate the manufacturing process. This process includes:
• the pre-press process, during which digital files are transferred directly from our computer servers to the
manufacturing system at the appropriate production facility;
Form 10-K