Table of Contents publicity or consumer perception or experience of our solutions, practices, products or services could adversely affect our reputation, resulting in difficulties in attracting and retaining members and business partners, and limiting the success of our community-building efforts and the range of solutions, products and services we are able to offer. Historically, many of our members have signed up for memberships because of positive word-of-mouth referrals by existing members, which has reduced our need to rely on traditional marketing efforts. To the extent that we are unable to maintain a positive brand reputation organically, we may need to rely more heavily on traditional marketing efforts to attract new members, which would increase our sales and marketing expenses both in absolute terms and as a percentage of our revenue. If our employees, members of our community or other people who enter our spaces act badly, our business and our reputation may be harmed. Our emphasis on our mission and values makes our reputation particularly sensitive to allegations of violations of community rules or applicable laws by our members, employees or other people who enter our spaces. While we verify the identity of any individual interested in joining our community, we do not conduct extensive background checks or otherwise extensively vet potential members prior to entering into membership agreements that provide them or their employees access to our locations. If our members, employees or other people violate our policies or engage in illegal or unethical behavior, or are perceived to do so, we may be the subject of negative publicity and our reputation may be harmed. These bad acts may also encourage existing members to leave our locations and make it more difficult for us to recruit new members at that location, which would adversely impact our results of operations for the affected location. If our pricing and related promotional and marketing plans are not effective, our business and prospects may be negatively affected. Our business and prospects depend on the impact of pricing and related promotional and marketing plans and our ability to adjust these plans to respond quickly to economic and competitive conditions. If our pricing and related promotional and marketing plans are not successful, or are not as successful as those of competitors, our revenue, membership base and market share could decrease, thereby adversely impacting our results of operations. We may make decisions consistent with our mission that may reduce our short- or medium-term operating results. Our mission is integral to everything we do, and many of our strategic and investment decisions are geared toward improving the experience of our members and the attractiveness of our community. While we believe that pursuing these goals will produce benefits to our business in the long-term, these decisions may adversely impact our short- or medium-term operating results and the long-term benefits that we expect to result from these initiatives may not materialize within the timeframe we expect or at all, which could harm our business and financial results. We may be unable to adequately protect or prevent unauthorized use of our trademarks and other proprietary rights and we may be prevented by third parties from using or registering our trademarks or other intellectual property. To protect our trademarks and other proprietary rights, we rely and expect to continue to rely on a combination of protective agreements with our employees and third parties (including local or other strategic partners we may do business with), physical and electronic security measures and trademark, copyright, patent and trade secret protection laws. In certain jurisdictions, rights in trademarks are derived from registration of the trademark. We may not have trademark rights in a jurisdiction where our trademarks are not registered, including with respect to any new brands and existing brands associated with new offerings. We have obtained a strategic set of trademark, copyright and patent applications or registrations in the United States and other jurisdictions and have filed, and we expect to file from time to time, additional trademark, copyright and patent applications. Nevertheless, these applications may not proceed to registration or issuance and in any event may not be comprehensive (particularly with respect to non-U.S. jurisdictions), third parties may challenge any trademarks, copyrights or patents issued to or held by us, the agreements (including license agreements with local or other strategic partners) and security measures we have in place may be inadequate or otherwise fail to effectively accomplish their protective purposes, third parties may infringe or misappropriate our intellectual property rights, and we may not be successful in asserting intellectual property rights against third parties. Third parties may also take the position that we are infringing their rights, and we may not be 31