America Online 2010 Annual Report Download - page 26

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power outages, natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, equipment failure or other events within or outside our control could adversely affect us and our
consumers, including loss or compromise of data, service disruption, damage to equipment and data and excessive call volume to call centers. Furthermore,
such attacks are not always able to be immediately detected, which means that we may not be in a position to promptly address the attacks or to implement
adequate preventative measures. Such events could result in large expenditures necessary to recover data, or repair or replace such networks or information
systems or to protect them from similar events in the future. As not all of our systems are fully redundant, some data or systems might not be recoverable after
such events. Significant incidents could result in a disruption of our business, consumer dissatisfaction, damage to the AOL brand, legal costs or liability, and
a loss of consumers or revenues.
We are dependent on third-party providers of telecommunications services.
Although we currently have agreements with several different third-party telecommunications service providers, there are only a limited number of such
providers that are capable of providing our network services. To the extent that we cannot renew or extend our contracts with these providers on similar terms
or to the extent that we cannot acquire similar network capacity from other providers on similar terms, the cost of obtaining network services may increase
and our financial results could be adversely affected. In addition, because of the 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. As we acquire and publish more original content, our intellectual property
may be increasingly subject to misappropriation by others, and the costs to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights may increase.
We have been, and may in the future be, subject to claims of intellectual property infringement or tort law violations 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,
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