Vistaprint 2006 Annual Report Download - page 18

Table of Contents
Intellectual Property
Protecting our intellectual property rights is part of our strategy for competitive differentiation. 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 eight issued United States patents, two issued European patents, and one issued French patent. Subject to our
continued payment of required patent maintenance fees, our currently issued patents will expire between December 2016 and May 2024. In
addition, we currently have more than 30 patent applications pending in the United States and other countries and we intend to pursue
corresponding patent coverage in additional countries to the extent we believe such coverage is justified, appropriate, and cost efficient. Our
issued patents relate generally to our automated process for receiving, processing, aggregating and producing multiple individual print jobs and to
automated processes for facilitating document creation at a client system.
In November 2004, we received a letter from attorneys representing Daniel Keane, the chief executive officer of Mod−Pac, our former
North American printing supplier, and the brother of Robert Keane, our chief executive officer, claiming an inventorship interest in our issued
United States patent relating to printing aggregation. If Daniel Keane were to commence an action to assert this claim and were successful in
establishing co−inventorship, he would be able to use, and license to others the right to use, this patent without paying any compensation to us.
We have informed Daniel Keane that we believe he does not qualify as a co−inventor, but there can be no guarantee that he will not commence a
formal action or that, if commenced, we will be successful in defending against such action. Similarly, Daniel Keane may claim inventorship in our
other patents or pending applications relating to printing aggregation and may accordingly obtain an interest in these other patents and pending
applications.
We have received letters from third parties that state that these third parties have patent rights that cover aspects of the technology that we
use in our business and that the third parties believe we are obligated to license in order to continue to use such technology. If any parties
successfully claim that our sale, use, manufacturing or importation of technologies infringes upon their intellectual property rights, we might be
forced to pay damages and attorney’s fees. Additionally, if we are found to have willfully infringed a third parties’ patent, we may be liable for treble
damages and a court could enjoin us from performing the infringing activity. Thus, the situation could arise in which our ability to use certain
technologies important to the operation of our business would be restricted by a court order.
Our primary brand is “VistaPrint.” We hold trademark registrations for the VistaPrint trademark in 15 jurisdictions, including registrations in
our major markets of the United States, the European Union, Canada and Japan. Additional applications for the VistaPrint mark are pending.
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.
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