VMware 2011 Annual Report Download - page 13

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Table of Contents
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2011
, more than 150 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office have been granted or assigned to
technologies. The granted United States patents will expire beginning in 2017, with the last patent expiring in 2030. 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,” “VMWARE
VSPHERE,” “VMWARE VCLOUD,” “SPRINGSOURCE,” “HYPERIC,” “VMOTION,” “ZIMBRA,” “GEMSTONE” 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, 2011
, we had over 11,000 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 http://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:
The information found on our website is not part of, and is not incorporated by reference into, this or any other report we
8
• 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 and webcasts of investor conferences, speeches and events at which our executives talk about our products, services and
competitive strategies. Archives of these events are also available for a limited time;
• additional information on financial metrics, including reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures discussed in our presentations to
the nearest comparable GAAP measure;
•
press releases on quarterly earnings, product and service announcements, legal developments and international news;
• corporate governance information including our certificate of incorporation, bylaws, corporate governance guidelines, board committee
charters, business conduct guidelines (which constitutes our code of business conduct and ethics) and other governance-related policies;
•
other news, blogs and announcements that we may post from time to time that investors might find useful or interesting; and
•
opportunities to sign up for email alerts and RSS feeds to have information pushed in real time.