A proactive IP strategy
We actively seek to protect the intellectual property and proprietary information and technology that we believe is important to our business, which includes seeking and maintaining patents covering our proprietary technology, product candidates, proprietary processes and any other inventions that are commercially and/or strategically important to our business development.
As of December 31, 2017, we owned a total of 16 patent families in which we owned 10 granted patents in the United States, 7 in Europe and several patents in other jurisdictions. We currently have 59 pending national/regional applications in a total of 13 jurisdictions (excluding the member states of the European Patent Convention in which the company’s European patents were validated).