America Online 2011 Annual Report Download - page 25

Table of Contents
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, 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.
As a publisher of original content, we also face risks of periodic tort claims such as libel, defamation or improper use of publicity rights in the course of
our journalism and news reporting endeavors, as well as infringement claims such as plagiarism. These claims, whether or not they have merit, may be time
consuming or costly to resolve.
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, sabotage or espionage, computer hacking or viruses, natural disasters, terrorism, equipment failure or
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