Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect our proprietary intellectual property rights, including technologies deployed in our current or future aircraft or utilized in arranging air transportation. To date, we have relied primarily on patents and trade secrets to protect our proprietary technology. Our software is also subject to certain protection under copyright law, though we have chosen not to register any of our copyrights to date. We routinely enter into non-disclosure agreements with our employees, consultants, third parties and others and take other measures to protect our intellectual property rights, such as limiting access to our trade secrets and other confidential information. We intend to continue to rely on these and other means, including patent protection, in the future. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property may be inadequate, and unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our intellectual property or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. If successful, these attempts may harm our ability to compete, accelerate the development of our competitors' programs, and/or harm our competitive position in the market. Moreover, our non-disclosure agreements do not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to ours. Our competitors or third parties may not comply with the terms of these agreements, and we may not be able to successfully enforce such agreements or obtain sufficient remedies if they are breached. In addition, we accept government funding for the development of some intellectual property which may result in the government obtaining some rights in our intellectual property. The intellectual property rights we own or license may not provide competitive advantages and could be challenged or circumvented by our competitors.
Further, obtaining and maintaining patent, copyright, and trademark protection can be costly. We may choose not to, or may fail to, pursue or maintain such forms of protection for our technology in the United States or foreign jurisdictions, which could harm our ability to maintain our competitive advantage in such jurisdictions. It is also possible that we will fail to identify patentable aspects of our technology before it is too late to obtain patent protection, that we will be unable to devote the resources to file and prosecute all patent applications for such technology, or that we will lose protection for failing to comply with all procedural, documentary, payment, and other obligations during the patent prosecution process. The laws of some countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights in some foreign countries may be inadequate to prevent other parties from infringing our proprietary technology. We may also fail to detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property, or be required to expend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights, including engaging in litigation, which may be costly, time-consuming, and divert the attention of management and resources, and may not ultimately be successful. If we fail to meaningfully establish, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.