Our Legal, Compliance and Data Privacy team plays a crucial role in safeguarding our business integrity and ensuring adherence to legal standards. We are committed to fostering a culture of compliance and risk awareness across the organization. By aligning our strategies with our overarching goals, we empower our teams to make informed decisions while navigating the complexities of the regulatory landscape. Our proactive approach not only helps mitigate potential legal risks but also supports our mission to drive innovation and deliver value to our stakeholders.
We strive to minimize and control our legal risks by taking the necessary precautions to identify threats and defend our rights where necessary. However, we remain exposed to risks from litigation and legal proceedings, particularly in such areas as product liability, competition and antitrust law, pharmaceutical law, patent law, trademark law, insider law, data protection law and tax law, as well as environmental protection.
As a research-based company, we possess a valuable portfolio of industrial property rights, patents and trademarks that may be vulnerable to infringements. The outcome of current or future proceedings is difficult to predict. For example, we are currently involved in litigation with Merck & Co. Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada), with lawsuits filed in various countries. This company has also initiated a trademark infringement lawsuit against us in the United States.
Due to long statutes of limitations, or their absence in some cases, we cannot rule out facing third-party claims related to the same issue even after legal proceedings have concluded. Court or official rulings or settlements deemed unlikely to possible could result in moderate to significant expenses impacting our business and earnings. Despite extensive precautionary measures, the risk of non-compliance with laws and regulations and the consequences thereof can never be completely excluded.
Product liability risks
We face product liability risks that can lead to substantial claims for damages and defense costs. To mitigate these risks, we have obtained liability insurance. However, it is possible that the insurance coverage may be insufficient in certain cases. Although the instances of product liability claims exceeding existing insurance coverage are deemed highly improbable to improbable, individual cases could still have a critical impact on our operations.