America Online 2009 Annual Report Download - page 26

Table of Contents
limited number of telecommunications services providers, in the event that a provider decides to exit the business of providing telecommunications services,
our ability to maintain the geographic scope of these network services could be adversely affected. In such an event, certain consumers in the affected
geographic areas would be unable to continue to use our subscription access service and our business could be adversely affected.
If we cannot continue to enforce and protect our intellectual property rights, our business could be adversely affected.
We rely on patent, copyright, trademark, domain name and trade secret laws in the United States and similar laws in other countries, as well as licenses
and other agreements with our employees, consumers, suppliers and other parties, to establish and maintain our intellectual property rights in the technology,
content, products and services used in our operations. These laws and agreements may not guarantee that our intellectual property rights will be protected and
our intellectual property rights could be challenged or invalidated. In addition, such intellectual property rights may not be sufficient to permit us to take
advantage of current industry trends or otherwise to provide competitive advantages, which could result in costly redesign efforts, discontinuance of offerings,
decreased traffic and associated revenue or otherwise adversely affect our business.
We have been, and may in the future be, subject to claims of intellectual property infringement that could adversely affect our business.
Periodically, third parties claim that we infringe their intellectual property rights. We expect to continue to be subject to claims and legal proceedings
regarding alleged infringement by us of the intellectual property rights of others. These claims, whether meritorious or not, are time-consuming and costly to
resolve, and may require expensive changes in our methods of doing business and/or our content, products and services. These intellectual property
infringement claims may require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements on unfavorable terms or to incur substantial monetary liability. Additionally,
these claims may result in our being enjoined preliminarily or permanently from further use of certain intellectual property and/or our content, products and
services, or may require us to cease or significantly alter certain of our operations. The occurrence of any of these events as a result of these claims could
result in substantially increased costs, could limit or reduce the number of our offerings to consumers, advertisers and publishers or otherwise adversely affect
our business.
Some of our commercial agreements may require us to indemnify parties against intellectual property infringement claims, which may require us to use
substantial resources to defend against or settle such claims or, potentially, to pay damages. Additionally, we may be exposed to liability or substantially
increased costs if a commercial partner does not honor its contractual obligation to indemnify us for intellectual property infringement claims made by third
parties. The occurrence of any of these events could adversely affect our business.
The misappropriation, release, loss or misuse of AOL data or consumer or other data could adversely affect our business.
Our business utilizes significant amounts of data about our business, consumers and our advertising and publishing partners in order to deliver our
content, products and services and our advertising solutions. The misappropriation, release, loss or misuse of this data, whether by accident, omission or as the
result of criminal activity, computer hacking, natural disasters, terrorism or other events, could lead to negative publicity, harm to our reputation, customer
dissatisfaction, regulatory enforcement actions or individual or class-action lawsuits or significant expenditures to recover the data or protect data from similar
releases in the future, and may otherwise adversely affect our business.
Changes to federal, state or international laws or regulations applicable to our business could adversely affect our business.
Our business is subject to a variety of federal, state and international laws and regulations, including those with respect to advertising generally,
consumer protection, content regulation, intellectual property, privacy,
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