The importance of IP filings in the fund-raising process.

I'm wondering about IP, especially in orthopedics and spine. At what point does that become important to investors? And does it ever—

is it always—

is the onus always on the company raising or the startup raising money to show freedom to operate or possibility of owning IP?

So I think IP is critically important. I think it's important from any investor's perspective that the company has given some thought to what they're developing, that, you know, getting an actual official freedom to operate opinion from a law firm is extremely expensive. So that's not typically, you know, something that startups can afford. I mean, it's, it's really expensive, but having the forethought to get, you know, the patent applications filed and maybe even issued is the most— is really critical. And that's something most startups have done when they're out talking with investors. At a minimum, they have the patent applications completed. Okay, so there's various kinds of investors. There are investors that will actually invest in a company because they feel the IP is so strong that if the company were to go out of business, and you know what, they typically— these investors will typically provide both debt and equity. So, so what they do is they provide an equity, you know, a large amount of equity, but a significant amount of debt. So if you wanted to raise, let's say, $7 million, maybe they'd provide $4 million of equity and $3 million of debt. Well, what does that do for them? If they've really analyzed your IP and decided that it's, you know, quite valuable, if the company goes out of business, then they own the IP because they were the lender. And so there are investors that have that model and that approach. Thank you.