MNKD 2017 Annual Report

there can be no assurance that the FDA, upon inspection, would find that the supplier substantially complies with the QSR or cGMP requirements, where applicable. If we or any potential third-party manufacturer or supplier fails to comply with these requirements or comparable requirements in foreign countries, regulatory authorities may subject us to regulatory action, including criminal prosecutions, fines and suspension of the manufacture of our products. If we are required to find a new or additional supplier of insulin, we will be required to evaluate the new supplier’s ability to provide insulin that meets regulatory requirements, including cGMP requirements as well as our specifications and quality requirements, which would require significant time and expense and could delay the manufacturing and commercialization of Afrezza. Reports of side effects or safety concerns in related technology fields or in other companies’ clinical studies could delay or prevent us from obtaining regulatory approval for our product candidates or negatively impact public perception of Afrezza or any other products we may develop. If other pharmaceutical companies announce that they observed frequent adverse events in their studies involving insulin therapies, we may be subject to class warnings in the label for Afrezza. In addition, the public perception of Afrezza might be adversely affected, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations and cause the market price of our common stock and other securities to decline, even if the concern relates to another company’s products or product candidates. There are also a number of clinical studies being conducted by other pharmaceutical companies involving compounds similar to, or potentially competitive with, our product candidates. Adverse results reported by these other companies in their clinical studies could delay or prevent us from obtaining regulatory approval or negatively impact public perception of our product candidates, which could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations and cause the market price of our common stock and other securities to decline. RISKS RELATED TO INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY If we are unable to protect our proprietary rights, we may not be able to compete effectively, or operate profitably. Our commercial success depends, in large part, on our ability to obtain and maintain intellectual property protection for our technology. Our ability to do so will depend on, among other things, complex legal and factual questions, and it should be noted that the standards regarding intellectual property rights in our fields are still evolving. We attempt to protect our proprietary technology through a combination of patents, trade secrets and confidentiality agreements. We own a number of domestic and international patents, have a number of domestic and international patent applications pending and have licenses to additional patents. We cannot assure you that our patents and licenses will successfully preclude others from using our technologies, and we could incur substantial costs in seeking enforcement of our proprietary rights against infringement. Even if issued, the patents may not give us an advantage over competitors with alternative technologies. For example, the coverage claimed in a patent application can be significantly reduced before a patent is issued, either in the United States or abroad. Statutory differences in patentable subject matter may limit the protection we can obtain on some of our inventions outside of the United States. For example, methods of treating humans are not patentable in many countries outside of the United States. These and other issues may limit the patent protection we are able to secure internationally. Consequently, we do not know whether any of our pending or future patent applications will result in the issuance of patents or, to the extent patents have been issued or will be issued, whether these patents will be subjected to further proceedings limiting their scope, will provide significant proprietary protection or competitive advantage, or will be circumvented or invalidated. In addition, in certain countries, including the United States, applications are generally published 18 months after the application’s priority date. In any event, because publication of discoveries in scientific or patent 38