Carbonite 2011 Annual Report Download - page 11

Table of Contents
as well as confidentiality procedures and contractual restrictions. CARBONITE and the Carbonite logo are registered trademarks in the U.S. and in over
30 other countries, including countries in the European Union. We have also filed trademark applications for additional marks in the U.S. and other
countries, including “Back it up. Get it Back”, “Because Your Life is On Your Computer”, the Carbonite Green Dot logo and Chinese character
representations for Carbonite. We have one issued patent covering the green dots that notify users that their files have been successfully backed up, 12
patent applications pending, and we are in the process of filing additional patent applications. The pending applications cover various aspects of our file
storage software, our remote access software, and our user interface.
The steps we have taken may not adequately protect our intellectual property or prevent unauthorized use of our technologies. Others may
independently develop technologies that are competitive to ours or infringe our intellectual property. In addition, costly and time consuming litigation
may be necessary to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights.
If we become more successful, we believe that competitors will be more likely to try to develop products and services that are similar to ours, and
that may infringe our proprietary rights. It may also be more likely that competitors or other third parties will claim that our solutions infringe their
proprietary rights.
Competition
We compete with both online backup providers and providers of traditional hardware-based backup systems. The market for online backup
solutions is competitive and rapidly changing. We directly compete with Prosoftnet, CrashPlan, Mozy (a division of VMWare), Norton Online Backup
(provided by Symantec), McAfee Online Backup, SOS Online Backup, and others. Certain of our features, including our remote access service, also
compete with current or potential services offered by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others. Certain of our planned features, including the
ability to share data with third parties, will also compete with current or potential services offered by DropBox, Mozy, SugarSync, and others. With the
introduction of new technologies and market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future. Many of our actual and potential competitors
enjoy competitive advantages over us, such as greater name recognition, longer operating histories, more varied services, and larger marketing budgets,
as well as greater financial, technical, and other resources. In addition, many of our competitors have established marketing relationships and access to
larger customer bases, and have major distribution agreements with computer manufacturers, internet service providers, and resellers.
We believe that the key competitive factors in the consumer and SMB backup industry include:
We believe that we compete favorably with respect to each of these factors by providing easy to use, affordable, unlimited, secure online backup
solutions with anytime, anywhere access to stored files.
Some of our competitors have made or may make acquisitions or enter into partnerships or other strategic relationships to offer a more
comprehensive service than we do. These combinations may make it more difficult
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ease of installation and use;
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affordability;
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remote access;
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storage capacity;
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security of customers
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stored files;
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rapid recovery of lost files;
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reliability and redundancy;
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automated file backup; and
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reputation of the provider.