Adobe 2008 Annual Report Download - page 35

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disclosed or published without our authorization, and in these situations it may be difficult and or costly for us to enforce our
rights.
We also devote significant resources to maintaining the security of our products from malicious hackers who develop
and deploy viruses, worms, and other malicious software programs that attack our products. Nevertheless, actual or perceived
security vulnerabilities in our products could harm our reputation and lead some customers to seek to return products, to
reduce or delay future purchases, to use competitive products or to make claims against us. Also, with the introduction of
hosted services with some of our product offerings, our customers may use such services to share confidential and sensitive
information. If a breach of security occurs on these hosted systems, we could be held liable to our customers. Additionally,
such breaches could lead to interruptions, delays and data loss and protection concerns as well as harm to our reputation.
We may not realize the anticipated benefits of past or future acquisitions, and integration of these acquisitions may disrupt
our business and management.
We have in the past and may in the future acquire additional companies, products or technologies. We may not realize
the anticipated benefits of an acquisition and each acquisition has numerous risks. These risks include:
• difficulty in assimilating the operations and personnel of the acquired company;
• difficulty in effectively integrating the acquired technologies or products with our current products and
technologies;
• difficulty in maintaining controls, procedures and policies during the transition and integration;
• disruption of our ongoing business and distraction of our management and employees from other opportunities and
challenges;
• difficulty integrating the acquired company’ s accounting, management information, human resources and other
administrative systems;
• inability to retain key technical and managerial personnel of the acquired business;
• inability to retain key customers, distributors, vendors and other business partners of the acquired business;
• inability to achieve the financial and strategic goals for the acquired and combined businesses;
• inability to take advantage of anticipated tax benefits as a result of unforeseen difficulties in our integration
activities;
• incurring acquisition-related costs or amortization costs for acquired intangible assets that could impact our
operating results;
• potential impairment of our relationships with employees, customers, partners, distributors or third-party providers
of technology or products;
• potential failure of the due diligence processes to identify significant problems, liabilities or other shortcomings or
challenges of an acquired company or technology, including but not limited to, issues with the acquired company’ s
intellectual property, product quality or product architecture, revenue recognition or other accounting practices,
employee, customer or partner issues or legal and financial contingencies;
• exposure to litigation or other claims in connection with, or inheritance of claims or litigation risk as a result of, an
acquisition, including but not limited to, claims from terminated employees, customers, former stockholders or
other third parties;
• incurring significant exit charges if products acquired in business combinations are unsuccessful;
• potential inability to assert that internal controls over financial reporting are effective;