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There is a wide range of providers that compete with us in
surveillance, as well as governance, risk and compliance
solutions. In surveillance, standardization of products and
budget pressures drive customers to focus on pricing. In
governance, risk and compliance, our products must compete
with solutions that are often part of larger suites, such as those
related to information technology management or general
business management.
Market conditions in this segment are evolving rapidly, which
makes continuous investment and innovation a necessity.
Technology
Technology plays a key role in ensuring the growth, reliability
and regulation of financial markets. We have established a
technology risk program to consider the resiliency of critical
systems. This program is focused on (i) identifying areas for
improvement in systems and (ii) implementing changes and
upgrades to technology and processes to minimize future risk.
We have continued our focus on improving the security of our
technology with an emphasis on employee awareness through
training, targeted phishing campaigns, and new tool
deployment for our securities operations team. In 2016, we
expanded this program to include recently acquired companies.
Core Technology. The foundation for Nasdaq’s core technology
is INET. The INET technology is used across our U.S. and
European markets. INET is also a key building block of our
Market Technology offerings, Genium INET and X-stream
INET. Genium INET and X-stream INET both combine
innovative functionality with a modular approach to manage
change and create new advantages for existing and new
customers.
We continuously improve our core technology with a focus on
improving capacity, reliability, resiliency and market integrity.
Data Centers. Nasdaq utilizes data center facilities in key global
regions to support our markets, technology services, disaster
recovery capabilities and operations centers. In 2016, we
continued to migrate systems to our facility in Chicago as well
as completed migration to a new data center in Sweden.
Blockchain Initiatives. During 2016, we continued to develop
Nasdaq Linq, a solution based on blockchain-enabled
technology, that may be used to expand and enhance issuers’
equity management capabilities. We also are completing work
on a proof of concept for proxy voting in Estonia and announced
the incorporation of blockchain services into the new Nasdaq
Financial Framework.
Intellectual Property
We own or have licensed rights to trade names, trademarks,
domain names and service marks that we use in conjunction
with our operations and services. We have registered many of
our most important trademarks in the U.S. and in foreign
countries. For example, our primary “NASDAQ” mark is a
registered trademark in the U.S. and in over 50 other countries
worldwide.
To support our business objectives and benefit from our
investments in research and development, we actively seek
protection for our innovations by filing patent applications to
protect inventions arising from investments in products,
systems, software and services. We believe that our patents and
patent applications are important for maintaining the
competitive differentiation of our products, systems, software
and services, enhancing our ability to access technology of third
parties and maximizing our return on research and development
investments.
Over time, we have accumulated a robust portfolio of issued
patents in the U.S., Europe and in other parts of the world. We
currently hold rights to patents relating to certain aspects of our
products, systems, software and services, but we primarily rely
on the innovative skills, technical competence and marketing
abilities of our personnel. Hence, no single patent is in itself
essential to us as a whole or any of our principal business areas.
We also maintain copyright protection in our Nasdaq-branded
materials.
Corporate Venture Practice
In 2017, Nasdaq expects to establish a corporate venture
practice to invest primarily in financial technology companies.
Nasdaq envisions that investments made through the venture
practice will further our organic research and development
efforts, and accelerate our path to commercial viability, in the
same way previous investments have supported our blockchain
and machine intelligence initiatives. Nasdaq expects that the
capital invested will be modest and will not have a material
impact on our consolidated financial statements or existing
capital return or deployment priorities.
Regulation
We are subject to extensive regulation in the U.S., Canada and
Europe.
U.S. Regulation
U.S. federal securities laws establish a system of cooperative
regulation of securities markets, market participants and listed
companies. SROs conduct the day-to-day administration and
regulation of the nation’s securities markets under the close
supervision of, and subject to extensive regulation, oversight
and enforcement by, the SEC. SROs, such as national securities
exchanges, are registered with the SEC.
This regulatory framework applies to our U.S. business in the
following ways:
•
regulation of our registered national securities exchanges;
and
•
regulation of our U.S. broker-dealer subsidiaries.
The rules and regulations that apply to our business are focused
primarily on safeguarding the integrity of the securities markets
and of market participants and investors generally. Accordingly,
our board of directors, officers, and employees must give due
regard to the preservation of the independence of the self-
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