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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

FORM 10-K

ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE
SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended May 31, 2002
Commission file number 0-26880

VERITY, INC.

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (408) 541-1500

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: None

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:

Common Stock, $0.001 Par Value
(Title of class)

     Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes [X] No [ ]

     Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. [X]

     The aggregate market value of the voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based upon the closing price of the Common Stock on July 31, 2002, as reported on Nasdaq National Market was approximately $228,084,000. Excludes approximately 14,835,000 shares of Common Stock held collectively by the executive officers and directors of the registrant and by each person who owned 5% or more of the outstanding Common Stock as of such date. Exclusion of shares held by any person should not be construed to indicate that such person is an affiliate of the registrant.

     The number of shares of the registrant’s Common Stock outstanding on July 31, 2002 was 35,199,316.

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PART I

Item 1. Business

     We own or have rights to trademarks or trade names that we use in conjunction with the operation of our business. We own the Verity, Verity Logo, Topic and Knowledge Organizer trademarks in the United States. This Annual Report on Form 10-K also includes trademarks owned by other parties.

     You should carefully read the information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes beginning on page 42 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Our business involves significant risks. You should carefully consider the information under the heading “— Risk Factors” below. In addition, this Annual Report contains forward-looking statements that relate to future events or future financial performance. See “Forward-Looking Statements” at the end of this Item 1 regarding information that readers should be aware of in reading these forward-looking statements.

Overview

     We are a leading provider of infrastructure software that powers corporate portals and e-commerce sites as well as e-business applications. The infrastructure software market is in great part the convergence of many core markets in which we have participated for years.

     We develop, market and support infrastructure products for corporate intranets, extranets, corporate portals, business applications, online publishers, e-commerce providers and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) toolkits for independent software vendors (ISVs). Our comprehensive and integrated product family enables numerous enterprise-wide functionalities, all from the same underlying Verity information index. Our products organize and provide simple, single-point access to information across the entire enterprise. In doing so, our products create business portals, which leverage the value of existing investments in Internets, intranets and business applications.

     Our software has been licensed directly to over 1,500 corporations, government agencies, software developers, information publishers and e-commerce vendors. We focus on several core markets, including intranet-based applications for large corporate and government organizations, information retrieval solutions for e-commerce merchants, Internet sites and electronic publishers, and OEM toolkits for ISVs. We pursue sales opportunities within organizations and government agencies through the efforts of our direct sales force and our products are also sold indirectly through a network of value added resellers (VARs) and system integrators, and as OEM toolkits through ISVs that embed Verity technology in their products or services.

     From 1988 to 1994, we derived substantially all of our revenues from the license of custom search and retrieval applications and consulting and other services related to such applications. In 1995, we began refining and enhancing our core technology to add functionality and facilitate incorporation of our technology in a variety of markets. Recently, we have begun offering solutions and technology that address the business portal market.

     We were organized as a California corporation in March 1988 and reincorporated in Delaware in September 1995. Our principal executive offices are located at 894 Ross Drive, Sunnyvale, California 94089, and our telephone number is (408) 541-1500. We maintain a web site on the World Wide Web at “verity.com.” The reference to our web address does not constitute incorporation by reference of the information contained at the site.

The Verity Solution

     Our comprehensive and integrated product family enables enterprise-wide document indexing, content organization, search and retrieval, organization and navigation, viewing, personalized dissemination, document recommendation, expert and community location, and hybrid online and CD/DVD publishing all from the same underlying Verity information index. Our products organize and provide simple, single-point access to information across the entire enterprise. By doing so, our products create business portals, which leverage the value of existing investments in intranet, Internet and network infrastructure. We believe the functionality and flexibility of our products enable us to offer our customers a knowledge solution that strengthens their businesses by improving efficiency, employee productivity and communication.

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     Our cross-platform knowledge retrieval product suite is scalable and is designed to solve the knowledge retrieval problems of enterprise and commerce sites. Our products:

	•		use a combination of full text, metadata and rule-based methods to index and retrieve information stored in a variety of formats and systems across corporate intranets, extranets and portals, and the Internet;
	•		organize and rank the relevance of selected information, enabling users to filter and evaluate information personalized to their specific needs and interests;
	•		enable user-initiated queries, and also enable the construction of automated software agents that actively and continuously monitor Internet and intranet information sources such as web sites, news feeds and file systems for new information or changes in content matching user profiles;
	•		enable the high-speed classification of information, the organization of information into taxonomies and the visual navigation of information;
	•		deliver the ability to filter most common file formats for viewing, and to convert most common file formats to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language);
	•		use the information created by individuals searching for and retrieving documents to automatically recommend additional documents, locate subject matter experts, and recognize communities of users with similar interests; and
	•		allow organizations to build hybrid online and offline information distribution systems by publishing information on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM, maintaining links to active web sites and enabling automatic synchronization between the Web and a user’s local computer.

     We originally developed our core search and retrieval technology for use by large government agencies in the defense and intelligence communities. In the past several years, we have enhanced and expanded our family of products and markets. Today, we offer a broad range of knowledge retrieval products for corporate intranets, extranets, corporate portals, e-commerce and publishing, and OEM toolkits for embedded solutions.

     Corporate Intranets, Extranets and Portals. We market an integrated product suite enabling public and private organizations to index, search, retrieve, classify, organize, navigate, disseminate and publish textual information residing in many document formats and in web and file servers distributed across the enterprise. Our social network technology uses the information created by individuals searching for and retrieving documents to automatically recommend additional documents, locate subject matter experts, and recognize communities of users with similar interests. Verity K2 Enterprise is designed to serve as the foundation of a well-designed corporate portal or business application. Verity K2 Enterprise provides enhanced portal return on investment through advanced search and accurate content organization. Verity Portal One provides a suite of portal components that can be selected to build custom portals. Verity Information Server creates a searchable index to information across the enterprise. Verity Agent Server notifies users when documents matching their personal information needs are added to this index and sends them electronic notices via email or personal web pages. With Verity Knowledge Organizer, data from different systems and sources can be grouped together logically and navigated visually, reducing content management costs and increasing the usability of corporate intangible assets. Verity Intelligent Classifier lets users quickly and easily build, share, reuse, test and modify the business rules Verity solutions use to automatically classify information. For especially long or complex documents, Verity Document Navigator provides a publishing tool, which turns long, awkward documents into rich Web publications that users can easily search and navigate. Users can search and traverse an automatically generated table of contents, and efficiently find valuable information hidden within large documents. Users can create these searchable publications from any format Verity supports, including Microsoft Word, HTML and PDF.

     Electronic Commerce and Publishing. E-commerce vendors, including online stores and publishers, demand fast and accurate searches across large bodies of content. Our Internet products are designed to provide e-commerce vendors and online information publishers with an integrated solution enabling their users to efficiently navigate product catalogs, news services and document repositories, whether online or from a remote, disconnected location. Through the use of our knowledge retrieval products, vendors have the ability to convert more site visitors into buyers and more buyers into repeat customers. Our product offerings include Verity K2 Catalog and Verity Publisher. Verity K2 Catalog is designed for scalability to support the largest commercial Internet sites and to enable millions of products and documents to be searched and indexed by hundreds of users simultaneously. Verity Publisher allows

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high-volume commercial and corporate publishers to use web-based information offline or from a low cost, searchable alternative media.

     OEMs and Embedded Solutions. Our toolkits enable software developers to embed our search-and-retrieval, profiling agent, and viewing and filtering technologies within their products. Our technology has been embedded in: document repository systems offered by Documentum, Stellent and FileNET; enterprise resource planning systems from SAP and PeopleSoft; and many business applications including relational and object-oriented database products and resume tracking, customer care and help desk systems.

Products

     Our product suite enables organizations to turn corporate intranets and extranets into a powerful knowledge base or corporate portal, making business information accessible and reusable across the enterprise. Our comprehensive and integrated product family enables enterprise-wide document indexing, content organization, search and retrieval, recommendation based on social network technology and personalized information dissemination, all from the same underlying Verity index. Because our products are designed to work together, customers may begin by deploying basic retrieval technology and can later incorporate more sophisticated content organization and social network technology as their business needs expand. Additionally, because we offer enterprise and departmental solutions, our customer’s investment is preserved by our capability to expand to support the largest document repositories and corporate intranets and extranets.

Enterprise Business Portal Products:

     Verity K2 Enterprise. Verity K2 Enterprise is infrastructure software that indexes, searches and retrieves information located in various repositories across an enterprise; applications include corporate intranets, portals, extranets, research and development, executive messaging and business intelligence systems. K2 Enterprise utilizes the Verity K2 architecture to deliver content organization, social network technology, rapid integration, limitless scalability, fault-tolerant operation and global support including support for multiple languages through best-of-breed locales.

     Verity K2 Catalog. Verity K2 Catalog is e-business infrastructure that indexes, searches and retrieves information in Business-to-Customer and Business-to-Business environments. K2 Catalog utilizes the Verity K2 architecture to deliver intelligent merchandising based on Verity’s content organization technology, social network technology, profitable site stickiness, rapid integration, adaptive personalization, limitless scalability, fault-tolerant operation and global support, including support for multiple languages through best-of-breed locales.

     Verity K2 Spider. Verity K2 Spider crawls, filters and indexes web and file servers, located internally or externally, in real time, using a distributed architecture. This enables the indexing process to be configured with numerous crawlers and indexers that are managed by a controller, so that performance can be optimized and the indexing process can scale infinitely. In conjunction with Verity K2 solutions, K2 Spider provides end-to-end fault tolerance, scalability, flexibility and accuracy.

     Verity Gateways. These add-on products extend the indexing range of Verity products. Through the use of gateways, Verity develops and markets access and indexing for popular information products, including Documentum, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Web and file servers, and relational databases.

     Verity Publisher. Verity Publisher is a hybrid CD-ROM/DVD-ROM-Web information publishing system. Publisher is designed to publish the contents of a web site on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM while maintaining links to web sites. Publisher is designed for high-volume information publishers, customer service organizations and others who need to use web-based information off-line. Publisher includes Verity’s standard search capabilities.

OEM and Custom Application Development Tools:

     Verity K2 Developer. Verity K2 Developer is a modular developer platform that allows independent software vendors to integrate Verity’s indexing, search and retrieval, content organization and social network technology into commercial software applications. K2 Developer supports popular programming interfaces to Sun’s Java and Microsoft’s COM, allowing users to rapidly build applications or integrate K2 Developer into their existing web environment.

     Verity Profiler Kit. Verity Profiler Kit enables users to develop applications that use content and metadata to classify information automatically and trigger business events. Profiler Kit enables developers to build specialized applications, using Verity’s patented

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technology, to disseminate information accurately to users, to notify users about critical new information, or to classify documents into specific categories.

     Verity Export. Verity Export provides on-demand, server-side conversion of documents to valid XML using a predefined Verity document type definition (DTD). The resulting XML can be indexed and searched, and viewed using cascading style sheets or extensible style language. Verity Export also provides, on-demand, server-side conversion of documents to web-ready HTML, so users can see any document, spreadsheet or presentation instantly through their browsers without the use of any other application.

     Verity Filter SDK. The Verity Filter SDK is designed to allow independent software vendors to embed Verity’s filtering functionality within their own applications. This allows their applications to index and search multiple file formats by extracting text and converting it to a data stream or ASCII text file.

     Verity KeyView SDK. The Verity KeyView Developer’s Kit is designed to allow independent software vendors to embed KeyView functionality within their own applications.

     Verity KeyView Pro. Verity KeyView Pro enables users to filter and view documents residing in hundreds of application formats and is targeted at corporate customers. KeyView Pro provides desktop viewing and filtering, and compression functionality.

Services

     We make extensive technical support and training services available for our customers, and provide consulting services designed to assist our customers in utilizing Verity software to develop custom search and retrieval, content organization and/or social network applications. As of May 31, 2002, we employed 26 people in our technical support organization, 43 people in our consulting group and 2 people focused on developing and coordinating training services.

     Technical Support and Maintenance. We provide post-sale customer support directly through our own technical support engineers, who handle most support calls by telephone and electronic mail. We offer annual maintenance contracts, which entitle our customers to full telephone support service, software updates and bug fixes. We also provide our customers access to technical support services by electronic mail and over the Internet and a bulletin board system.

     Consulting. We offer consulting services to our enterprise customers, OEMs, value added resellers and system integrators to assist them in designing and deploying Verity applications tailored to meet their particular information search and retrieval needs. Consulting services have typically been offered on a time and materials basis.

     Training. We provide training services at our own training facilities located in Sunnyvale, California, and London, United Kingdom, as well as at the facilities of our customers, value added resellers and system integrators worldwide. We also provide training through certain authorized third parties. Courses are also delivered online. We have developed an extensive set of courses and materials for presentation by our professional instructors. We believe our training helps assure increased customer satisfaction while enhancing our ability to make additional sales to our existing customer base. Customers typically pay for training services on a per course or per day fee basis.

Customers

     Our software has been licensed directly to over 1,500 corporations, government agencies, software developers, information publishers and e-commerce vendors. We focus on several core markets, including intranet-based applications for large corporate and government organizations, information retrieval solutions for e-commerce and electronic publishers, and OEM toolkits for ISVs. See Note 11 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements beginning on page 55 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of our international revenues, income from operations and long-lived assets by geographic region.

Sales and Marketing

     We seek to tailor our sales and marketing efforts to most effectively reach customers in each of our core markets. We pursue opportunities within organizations and government agencies through the efforts of our direct sales force. Our products are also sold indirectly through our channel sales force, which includes a network of OEM customers, value added resellers and system integrators.

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     Direct Sales. Our direct sales force is trained to assist customers to acquire and utilize our suite of products to integrate information residing within the organization in a variety of repositories, such as Lotus Notes, Documentum, Microsoft Exchange, relational databases and web and file servers. Our direct sales force also targets online service providers and publishers of information stored on both the Internet and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM. We maintain direct sales offices or personnel in a number of metropolitan areas across the United States, including Falls Church, Burlington, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Sunnyvale. European direct sales operations are located in London, Utrecht (The Netherlands), Munich and Paris. We also have direct sales offices located in Australia and Mexico.

     Channel Sales. We work with a variety of partner types, including OEM customers, Independent Software Vendors and System Integrator Alliances. Partner companies are chosen based upon a strong mutual value-proposition and willingness to collaborate closely with our direct sales team. While our partner agreements may provide for resale rights in some cases, the majority of the time both sides sell their own products and services to satisfy mutual customer needs. Our products are also resold through partners in North America, Western Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australia.

     Our technology is also sold as an integrated OEM feature of more than 200 software applications offered by over 100 OEM and ISV providers. Our OEM partners are drawn from such application markets as:

	•		application integration (iManage, iPlanet, Macromedia, TIBCO);
	•		groupware (Lotus);
	•		document and content management (divine, Documentum, FileNET, Stellent);
	•		enterprise resource planning systems (PeopleSoft, SAP);
	•		help desk and customer care solutions (Kana, Peregrine, ServiceWare);
	•		e-commerce (Haht Software);
	•		personal productivity (Adobe); and
	•		storage (OTG/Legato).

     Our marketing activities are targeted at building market awareness and identifying prospective customers for enterprise, Internet and e-commerce, online publishing, hybrid CD-ROM/DVD-ROM-Web and OEM applications. Our marketing efforts include participation in tradeshows, conferences and industry events, Verity seminars, industry speaking engagements, and advertising and direct mail campaigns targeting specific markets such as corporate portal developers, intranet web site and content managers, and online catalog developers. Certain of our OEM contracts also provide for brand name exposure concerning the ISV’s embedding of Verity technology. We also maintain an active public relations program targeting industry analysts and leaders in the trade and business press, and maintain a public web site, which has been a source of sales leads. As of May 31, 2002, our sales and marketing organizations consisted of 161 employees.

Technology

     Our core technology was originally developed by us for use by large government agencies in the defense and intelligence communities to perform complex, customized search and retrieval applications on stand-alone, host-based systems. Since early fiscal 1994, we have expanded our product offerings to support commercial client/server and web-based computing environments. We have expanded our markets to include corporate intranets and e-commerce vendors, ISVs and online and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM information publishers. Our technologies address the major aspects of knowledge retrieval including document indexing, query formulation and execution, concept-based information retrieval, ranking and presentation of results, content organization, automated information dissemination, information organization and navigation, document viewing and filtering, automatic recommendation of documents and subject matter experts, user community recognition and hybrid CD-ROM/DVD-ROM-Web publishing.

     Indexing. The search technology incorporated in our server products and OEM applications indexes documents automatically based upon administrator-specified criteria. This index is referred to as a “Verity collection.” Verity indices exploit full text, metadata and our unique knowledge mapping system, Topics®. Collections created through the indexing process contain the results of text

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analysis performed by our engine, as well as information about the document’s context and structure. End users with Verity-based applications or standard web browsers can search those collections that administrators make available to them. The Verity architecture is designed to permit real-time indexing of new documents into a Verity collection, even while users actively search that collection. As a result, the system provides enhanced availability, and is designed to operate during maintenance and back up. The Verity K2 architecture enhances the availability of our applications by providing redundant processing paths, further enhancing system availability.

     Search Execution. Our search technology is designed to enable users to formulate and refine queries using a series of information retrieval methods including keyword, thesauri, dictionaries and concept-based retrieval. Once formulated, queries can be used to retrieve archived information using a standard, interactive search. Our core query formulation technology is the Verity Query Language, which contains more than 30 operators that can be used to formulate precise and filtered information requests. Our search engine is designed with an open architecture, which employs multiple search techniques and supports incorporation of additional techniques by us, by third parties or by organizations building custom applications. This open environment enables third-party developers to extend the functionality and capabilities of our products and tools. Our high performance search technology employs a network of brokers and servers to offer scalable, parallel searching across hundreds of millions of documents. The technology is designed to scale linearly with the growth of users, documents or queries, and to support the largest corporate intranets and e-commerce sites.

     Ranking and Results Presentation. The results obtained by matching queries against document collections are provided with a relevance score calculated by the Verity engine. This score may be presented, along with other available document-attribute information desired by the user, in a customizable results list. We have also developed functionality that enables the organization or “clustering” of search results according to common themes within the retrieved documents. We also provide automatic document summarization and query by example, a facility allowing any document to be turned into a “find more documents like this” query. Sets of documents may also be navigated as a directory using Knowledge Organizer to organize documents into taxonomies that can be browsed visually.

     Parametric Selection. The parametric selection interface allows users to search for information by combining structured and unstructured searches, as well as by using semi-structured information. Users can both select specific characteristics from structured information to narrow down the number of possible matches, and submit queries against unstructured text against the matches.

     Federated Search. Verity federated search technology allows users to submit a single query to multiple Verity and non-Verity information sources, and receive the results in a merged and ranked list that has been filtered for duplicate results.

     Document Profiling. Verity Profiler is a high-speed matching engine, which compares a stream of new documents or a collection of existing documents to a set of Topics or other stored queries. Verity Profiler determines which queries best match those documents, based on threshold values established by the user or administrator. The output of Profiler is a set of metadata identifying the queries that match individual documents. This metadata can be stored as persistent classification information or can be used to trigger custom business processes such as automated routing of information to users. This profiling process is designed to address high user and data volumes such as those associated with large corporate intranets and online applications such as news services.

     Automated Information Dissemination. Any query can be used as an active agent deployed to watch and “clip” relevant information as it enters a corporate network or public web site. Verity agents compare new information with a database of stored queries, which are linked to user profiles. User profiles specify the frequency and method by which users want to be notified about subjects that they are tracking. Our agent-based technology can notify and route information to users via email, a page, a pager or a custom process such as automated filing of information into subject directories. Our agent technology is targeted at organizations building executive briefing, message handling, competitive intelligence and related systems.

     Content Organization. Verity’s content organization technology augments highly accurate automatic classification using Verity’s proprietary Logistic Regression Classification technology with business rules that can be reused, shared, modified and tested by humans. Existing taxonomies can be reused, or documents can be classified according to metadata, pathnames, URLs or new taxonomies created with business rules. This allows companies to organize their information assets the same way they organize their business. When combined with Verity’s advanced search, users are equipped with the tools they need to quickly and intuitively discover relevant information across the enterprise or in e-business catalogs. Searches can be limited to specific directories, or users can drill down through familiar directories and sub-directories to find the information for which they are searching. Verity’s thematic mapping technology can analyze an entire corpus of documents to reveal unknown patterns, trends and areas of knowledge.

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     Social Networks. Verity’s social network technology employs proprietary Tensor Space Analysis to provide a number of personalization features. These include recommending similar documents based on current queries and/or past user behavior, locating subject matter experts within the organization, recognizing and bringing together communities of users that share similar interests, and using both implicit and explicit feedback to enhance result list ranking.

     Viewers and Filters. Document filtering automatically detects the kind of document being indexed and isolates the text to be indexed from embedded formatting information. Filters are designed to enable the indexing engine to handle a wide variety of document types and formats. The threadsafe nature of our filters helps assure fast and reliable access to documents for searching. Our viewing technology is designed to provide users with the ability to view documents in a variety of formats without the use of the application, which generated the document. On the basis of our filtering and viewing technology, we have developed a series of applications. These include the KeyView Pro desktop viewing product, and Verity Export, a toolkit for building applications that require conversion of documents into web-ready HTML or valid XML.

     Hybrid CD-ROM/DVD-ROM-Web Publishing. We have developed technology-enabling organizations to publish the contents of web sites onto CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and other permanent storage media. Used in professional information publishing, market data distribution and customer care applications, Verity Publisher combines media authoring and the Verity search engine on a CD or DVD for offline viewing of high volume information. This technology automatically synchronizes upon connecting to the Web ensuring that local client-based information is up-to-date.

Product Development

     Our development efforts are focused on expanding our suite of products, designing enhancements to our core technology, and addressing additional technical challenges inherent in developing new applications for enterprise, e-commerce and OEM markets. Our research and development is focused on enhancing core indexing and search performance and precision, data access and security gateways, enterprise scalability, business portal functionality, programmable application programming interfaces, product deployability, and information classification and social networks technology. As of May 31, 2002, there were 157 employees on our research and development staff. Our research and development expenditures in fiscal 2002, fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2000 were $23.6 million, $21.6 million and $16.0 million, respectively, which represented 25.2%, 14.9% and 16.7% of total revenues, respectively. We expect that we will continue to commit substantial resources to product development in the future.

Competition

     The business portal infrastructure software market is intensely competitive. We believe that the principal competitive factors in such market are:

	•		product quality;
	•		performance and price;
	•		vendor and product reputation;
	•		product architecture;
	•		strategic alliances;
	•		product functionality and features; and
	•		ease of use and quality of support.

     A number of companies offer competitive products addressing certain of our target markets. In the enterprise market, we compete with Alta Vista, Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, FAST, Google, Hummingbird/PC Docs/Fulcrum, Inktomi, Mercado, Microsoft, Open Text and Thunderstone, among others. Plumtree is on occasion a competitor, but is viewed primarily as our partner and customer. In the Internet/publishing market, we compete with Convera, Dataware, FAST, Hummingbird/PC Docs/Fulcrum, Infoseek, Inktomi, Lotus and Microsoft, among others. We also compete indirectly with database vendors, such as Oracle, that offer information search and retrieval capabilities with their core database products. In the future, we may encounter competition from companies that enhance products such as:

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	•		application servers;
	•		document management systems;
	•		groupware applications;
	•		Internet products; and
	•		operating systems to include text search and retrieval features.

     Many of our existing competitors have significantly greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do. Although we believe that our products and technologies compete favorably with respect to the factors outlined above, we cannot assure you that we will be able to compete successfully against our current or future competitors or that competition will not seriously harm our business.

     One element of our strategy is to embed our technology in products offered by our OEM customers. Many of the markets for these products are also new and evolving and, therefore, subject to the same risks that we face in the markets for our own products. In addition, consolidation in the industries we serve could, and acquisition or development by any of our significant customers of technology competitive with ours would, materially and adversely affect our business and prospects.

     Our Verity Publisher product competes primarily with Dataware, Enigma and Nextpage.

Proprietary Rights

     Our success and ability to compete is dependent in part upon our proprietary technology. Any failure to adequately protect our proprietary rights could result in unexpected costs and delays in shipment. While we rely on trade secret and copyright law to protect our technology, we believe that the following factors are more essential to establishing and maintaining a technology leadership position:

	•		the technological and creative skills of our personnel;
	•		new product developments;
	•		frequent product enhancements;
	•		name recognition; and
	•		reliable product maintenance.

     We presently have one issued patent, relating to our search and retrieval technology, which will expire in January 2016, and eleven patent applications pending. We cannot assure you that other companies will not develop technologies that are similar or superior to our technology. The source code for our proprietary software is protected both as a trade secret and as a copyrighted work. Despite these precautions, it may be possible for a third party to copy or otherwise obtain and use our products or technology without authorization, or to develop similar technology independently. In addition, effective copyright and trade secret protection may be unavailable or limited in some foreign countries.

     To license our products, we frequently rely on “shrink wrap” licenses that are not signed by the end user and, therefore, may be unenforceable under the laws of several jurisdictions. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our products or to obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. Policing unauthorized use of our products is difficult. We cannot assure you that the steps we take will prevent misappropriation of our technology or that these agreements will be enforceable. In addition, litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition regardless of the outcome of the litigation.

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     Some of the technology used by our products is licensed from third parties, generally on a nonexclusive basis. We believe that there are alternative sources for each of the material components of technology we license from third parties. However, the termination of any of these licenses, or the failure of the third-party licensors to adequately maintain or update their products, could result in a delay in our ability to ship these products while we seek to implement technology offered by alternative sources. Any required replacement licenses could prove costly. Also, any delay, to the extent it becomes extended or occurs at or near the end of a fiscal quarter, could result in a material adverse effect on our quarterly results of operations. While it may be necessary or desirable in the future to obtain other licenses relating to one or more of our products or relating to current or future technologies, we cannot assure you that we will be able to do so on commercially reasonable terms or at all.

Employees

     As of May 31, 2002, we had a total of 432 employees, including 157 in research and development, 134 in sales, 27 in marketing, 71 in customer support and professional services, 38 in administration and 5 in manufacturing. Of these employees, 262 were located in the United States, 78 in Europe, 87 in Canada, 2 in Australia, 1 in South Africa and 2 in Mexico. None of our employees is represented by a collective bargaining agreement, nor have we experienced any work stoppage. We consider our relations with our employees to be good.

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RISK FACTORS

     The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only risks and uncertainties we face. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial also may impair our business operations. If any of the following risks actually occur, our business, results of operations and financial condition would suffer. In that event, the trading price of our common stock could decline, and our stockholders may lose all or part of their investment in our common stock. The discussion below and elsewhere in this report also includes forward-looking statements, and our actual results may differ substantially from those discussed in these forward-looking statements as a result of the risks discussed below.

Risks Related to Our Business

We have sustained quarterly and annual losses in the past and may not be able to maintain profitability

     We incurred net losses in two quarters of fiscal 2002, and although we reported net income for fiscal 2002 we may not be able to maintain profitability. In the future, our revenues may decline, remain flat, or grow at a rate slower than was experienced in periods prior to the quarter ended August 31, 2001, especially in light of the recent economic slowdown. To achieve revenue growth and maintain fiscal year profitability, we must:

	•		increase market acceptance of our products;
	•		respond effectively to competitive developments;
	•		execute sales despite the recent economic slowdown and resulting decrease in our customers’ capital spending;
	•		attract, retain and motivate qualified personnel; and
	•		upgrade our technologies and commercialize our products and services incorporating these technologies.

     We cannot assure you that we will be successful in achieving any of these goals or that we will experience increased revenues, positive cash flows, or achieve long-term profitability.

Our revenues and operating results may fluctuate in future periods, which could adversely affect our stock price

     The results of operations for any quarter are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected in future periods. We expect our stock price to vary with our operating results and, consequently, any adverse fluctuations in our operating results could have an adverse effect on our stock price. Our operating results have in the past been, and will continue to be, subject to quarterly fluctuations as a result of a number of factors. These factors include:

	•		the downturn in capital spending by customers as a result of the current economic slowdown;
	•		the size and timing of orders;
	•		changes in the budget or purchasing patterns of corporations and government agencies, foreign country exchange rates, or pricing pressures from competitors;
	•		increased competition in the software and Internet industries;
	•		the introduction and market acceptance of new technologies and standards in search and retrieval, Internet, document management, database, networking, and communications technology;
	•		variations in sales channels, product costs, the mix of products sold, or the success of quality control measures;
	•		the integration of people, operations, and products from acquired businesses and technologies;
	•		changes in operating expenses and personnel;

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	•		changes in accounting principals, such as a requirement that stock options be included in compensation, as is currently being considered by Congress and, which if adopted, would increase our compensation expenses and have a negative effect on our earnings;
	•		the overall trend toward industry consolidation; and
	•		changes in general economic and geo-political conditions and specific economic conditions in the computer and software industries.

     Any of the factors, some of which are discussed in more detail below, could materially and adversely impact our operations and financial results, and consequently our stock price.

The size and timing of large orders may materially affect our quarterly operating results

     The size and timing of individual orders may cause our operating results to fluctuate significantly. Our operating results for a quarter could be materially and adversely affected if one or more large orders are either not received or are delayed or deferred by customers. A significant portion of our revenues in recent quarters has been derived from these relatively large sales to a limited number of customers, and we currently anticipate that future quarters will continue to reflect this trend. Sales cycles for these customers can be up to six months or longer. In addition, customer order deferrals in anticipation of new products may cause our operating results to fluctuate. Like many software companies, we have generally recognized a substantial portion of our revenues in the last month of each quarter, with these revenues concentrated in the last weeks of the quarter. Accordingly, the cancellation or deferral of even a small number of purchases of our products could harm our business in any particular quarter. In addition, to the extent that the significant sales occur earlier than expected, operating results for subsequent quarters may fail to keep pace or even decline.

Our sales cycle is lengthy and unpredictable

     Any delay in sales of our products and services could cause our quarterly revenue and operating results to fluctuate. The typical sales cycle of our products is lengthy, generally between six to twelve months, unpredictable, and involves significant investment decisions by prospective customers, as well as our education of potential customers regarding the use and benefits of our products. Our customers spend a substantial amount of time before purchasing our products in performing internal reviews and obtaining capital expenditure approvals. Our sales cycle has lengthened in 2002 and we cannot be certain that this cycle will not lengthen in the future.

Our expenditures are tied to anticipated revenues, and therefore imprecise forecasts may result in poor operating results

     Revenues are difficult to forecast because the market for search and retrieval software is uncertain and evolving. Because we generally ship software products within a short period after receipt of an order, we typically do not have a material backlog of unfilled orders, and revenues in any quarter are substantially dependent on orders booked in that quarter. In addition, a portion of our revenues is derived from royalties based upon sales by third-party vendors of products incorporating our technology. These revenues may be subject to extreme fluctuation and are difficult for us to predict. Our expense levels are based, in part, on our expectations as to future revenues and are to a large extent fixed. Therefore, we may be unable to adjust spending in a timely manner to compensate for any unexpected revenue shortfall. Any significant shortfall of demand in relation to our expectations or any material delay of customer orders would have an almost immediate adverse affect on our operating results and on our ability to achieve profitability.

We have been sued, and are at risk of future securities class action litigation, due to our past and expected stock price volatility

     In the past, securities class action litigation has often been brought against a company following a decline in the market price of its securities. For example, in December 1999 our stock price dramatically declined and a number of lawsuits were filed against us. Because we expect our stock price to continue to fluctuate significantly, we may be the target of similar litigation in the future. Securities litigation could result in substantial costs and divert management’s attention and resources, and could seriously harm our business.

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We must successfully introduce new products or our customers will purchase our competitors products

     During the past few years, management and other personnel have focused on modifying and enhancing our core technology to support a broader set of search and retrieval solutions for use on enterprise-wide systems, over online services, over the Internet and on CD-ROM. In order for our strategy to succeed and to remain competitive, we must leverage our core technology to develop new product offerings by us and by our original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, customers that address the needs of these new markets. These development efforts are expensive. If these products do not generate substantial revenues, our business and results of operations will be adversely affected. We cannot assure you that any of these products will be successfully developed and completed on a timely basis or at all, will achieve market acceptance or will generate significant revenues.

     Our future operating results will depend upon our ability to increase the installed base of our information retrieval technology and to generate significant product revenues from our core products. Our future operating results will also depend upon our ability to successfully market our technology to online and Internet publishers who use this technology to index their published information in our format. To the extent that customers do not adopt our technology for indexing their published information, users will be unable to search their information using our search and retrieval products, which in turn will limit the demand for our products.

We face intense competition from companies with significantly greater financial, technical, and marketing resources, which could adversely affect our ability to maintain or increase sales of our products

     The business portal software market is intensely competitive and we cannot assure you that we will maintain our current position of market share. A number of companies offer competitive products addressing this market. We compete with Alta Vista, Autonomy, Convera, Epicentric, FAST, Hummingbird/PC Docs/Fulcrum, Inktomi, Infoseek, Lotus, Mercado, Microsoft, Thunderstone and Viador, among others. We also compete indirectly with database vendors, such as Oracle, that offer information search and retrieval capabilities with their core database products and web platform companies, such as Netscape.

     In the future, we may encounter competition from a number of companies. Many of our existing competitors, as well as a number of other potential new competitors, have significantly greater financial, technical and marketing resources than we do. Because the success of our strategy is dependent in part on the success of our strategic customers, competition between our strategic customers and the strategic customers of our competitors, or failure of our strategic customers to achieve or maintain market acceptance could harm our competitive position. Although we believe that our products and technologies compete favorably with competitive products, we cannot assure you that we will be able to compete successfully against our current or future competitors or that competition will not harm our business.

We rely on Regent Pacific Management Corporation for the management of Verity, and the loss of these services could adversely affect our business

     Regent Pacific Management Corporation, a management firm of which Gary J. Sbona, our chairman of the board and chief executive officer, is chief executive officer, provides management services for our company under a management services agreement. The management services provided under our agreement with Regent Pacific include the services of Regent Pacific personnel as part of Verity’s management team. The agreement terminates on August 31, 2003, but provides us with an option to further extend the term of this agreement through February 2004. This agreement may be cancelled at the option of the board after February 2004. If the agreement with Regent Pacific were canceled or not renewed, the loss of the Regent Pacific personnel could negatively affect our operations, especially during the transition phase to a new management. Similarly, if any adverse change in Verity’s relationship with Regent Pacific occurs, it could hinder management’s ability to direct our business and materially and adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Our business may suffer due to risks associated with international sales

     Historically, our foreign operations and export sales account for a significant portion of our annual revenues. Our international business activities are subject to a number of risks, each of which could impose unexpected costs on us that would have an adverse effect on our operating results. These risks include:

	•		difficulties in complying with regulatory requirements and standards;
	•		tariffs and other trade barriers;

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	•		costs and risks of localizing products for foreign countries;
	•		reliance on third parties to distribute our products;
	•		longer accounts receivable payment cycles;
	•		potentially adverse tax consequences;
	•		limits on repatriation of earnings; and
	•		burdens of complying with a wide variety of foreign laws.

     We currently engage in only limited hedging activities to protect against the risk of currency fluctuations. Fluctuations in currency exchange rates could cause sales denominated in U.S. dollars to become relatively more expensive to customers in a particular country, leading to a reduction in sales or profitability in that country. Also, these fluctuations could cause sales denominated in foreign currencies to affect a reduction in the current U.S. dollar revenues derived from sales in a particular country. Furthermore, future international activity may result in increased foreign currency denominated sales and, in this event, gains and losses on the conversion to U.S. dollars of accounts receivable and accounts payable arising from international operations may contribute significantly to fluctuations in our results of operations. The financial stability of foreign markets could also affect our international sales. In addition, revenues earned in various countries where we do business may be subject to taxation by more than one jurisdiction, thereby adversely affecting our earnings. We cannot assure you that any of these factors will not have an adverse effect on the revenues from our future international sales and, consequently, our results of operations.

     Service and other revenues derived from foreign operations accounted for 13.9%, 6.3% and 6.7% of total revenues in fiscal years 2002, 2001, and 2000 respectively. Our export sales consist primarily of products licensed for delivery outside of the United States. In fiscal years 2002, 2001 and 2000, export sales accounted for 21.8%, 26.0% and 19.0% of total revenues, respectively. We expect that revenues derived from foreign operations and export sales will continue to account for a significant percentage of our revenues for the foreseeable future. These revenues may fluctuate significantly as a percentage of revenues from period to period. In addition, a portion of these revenues was derived from sales to foreign government agencies, which may be subject to risks similar to those described immediately below. See Note 11 of Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements beginning on page 55 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of our international revenues, income (loss) from operations and long-lived assets by geographic region.

A portion of our revenues is derived from sales to the federal government, which are subject to budget cuts and, consequently, the potential loss of revenues upon which we have historically relied

     Revenues derived from sales to the federal and state governments and their agencies were 6.1%, 7.4% and 7.8% of total revenues in fiscal years 2002, 2001 and 2000, respectively. Future reductions in government spending on information technologies could harm our operating results. Sales to government agencies declined as a percentage of revenues during these periods, and may decline in the future. In recent years, budgets of many government agencies have been reduced, causing certain customers and potential customers of our products to re-evaluate their needs. These budget reductions are expected to continue over at least the next several years.

     Almost all of our government contracts contain termination clauses, which permit contract termination upon our default or at the option of the other contracting party. We cannot assure you a cancellation will not occur in the future, and any termination would adversely affect our operating results.

If we are unable to enhance our existing products to conform to evolving industry standards in our rapidly changing markets, our products may become obsolete

     The computer software industry is subject to rapid technological change, changing customer requirements, frequent new product introductions, and evolving industry standards that may render existing products and services obsolete. As a result, our position in our existing markets or other markets that we may enter could be eroded rapidly by product advancements by competitors. If we are unable to develop and introduce products in a timely manner in response to changing market conditions or customer requirements, our financial condition and results of operations would be materially and adversely affected.

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     The life cycles of our products are difficult to estimate. Our future success will depend upon our ability to keep pace with technological developments, conform to evolving industry standards, particularly client/server and Internet communication and security protocols, as well as publishing formats such as HTML and XML, and address increasingly sophisticated customer needs. We cannot assure you that we will not experience difficulties that could delay or prevent the successful development, introduction and marketing of new products, or that new products and product enhancements will meet the requirements of the marketplace and achieve market acceptance.

     We strive to achieve compatibility between our products and the text publication formats we believe are or will become popular and widely adopted. We invest substantial resources in development efforts aimed at achieving compatibility. Any failure by us to anticipate or respond adequately to technology or market developments could result in a loss of competitiveness or revenue. For instance, to date we have focused our efforts on integration with the Adobe PDF and Lotus Notes environments and, more recently, the Microsoft Exchange environment. Should any of these products or technologies lose or fail to achieve acceptance in the marketplace or be replaced by other products or technologies, our business could be materially and adversely affected.

     We embed our basic search engine in key OEM application products and, therefore, our sales of information retrieval products depend on our ability to maintain compatibility with these OEM applications. We cannot assure you that we will be able to maintain compatibility with these vendors’ products or continue to be the search technology of choice for OEMs. The failure to maintain compatibility with or be selected by OEMs would materially and adversely affect our sales. Further, the failure of the products of our key OEM partners to achieve market acceptance could harm our results of operations.

Our software products are complex and may contain errors that could damage our reputation and decrease sales

     Our complex software products may contain errors that may be detected at any point in the products’ life cycles. We have in the past discovered software errors in some of our products and have experienced delays in shipment of products during the periods required to correct these errors. We cannot assure you that, despite our testing and quality assurance efforts and similar efforts by current and potential customers, errors will not be found. The discovery of an error may result in loss of or delay in market acceptance and sales, diversion of development resources, injury to our reputation, or increased service and warranty costs, any of which could harm our business. Although we generally attempt by contract to limit our exposure to incidental and consequential damages, and to cap our liabilities to our proceeds under the contract, if a court fails to enforce the liability limiting provisions of our contracts for any reason, or if liabilities arise which are not effectively limited, our operating results could be harmed.

If we lose key personnel, or are unable to attract additional qualified personnel, our ability to conduct and grow our business will be impaired

     We believe that hiring and retaining qualified individuals at all levels is essential to our success, and we cannot assure you that we will be successful in attracting and retaining the necessary personnel. In addition, we are highly dependent on our direct sales force for sales of our products as we have limited distribution channels. Continuity of technical personnel is an important factor in the successful completion of development projects, and any turnover of our research and development personnel could harm our development and marketing efforts.

     Our future success also depends on our continuing ability to identify, hire, train and retain other highly qualified sales, technical and managerial personnel. Competition for this type of personnel is intense, and we cannot assure you that we will be able to attract, assimilate or retain other highly qualified technical and managerial personnel in the future. The inability to attract, hire or retain the necessary sales, technical and managerial personnel could harm our business.

Our ability to compete successfully will depend, in part, on our ability to protect our intellectual property rights, which we may not be able to protect

     We rely on a combination of patent, trade secrets, copyright and trademark laws, nondisclosure agreements and other contractual provisions and technical measures to protect our intellectual property rights. The source code for our proprietary software is protected both as a trade secret and as a copyrighted work. Policing unauthorized use of our products, however, is difficult. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our trade secrets, to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others, or to defend against claims of infringement or invalidity. Litigation could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and could harm our business regardless of the outcome of the litigation.

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     Effective copyright and trade secret protection may be unavailable or limited in some foreign countries. To license our products, we frequently rely on “shrink wrap” licenses that are not signed by the end user and, therefore, may be unenforceable under the laws of several jurisdictions. In addition, employees, consultants and others who participate in the development of our products may breach their agreements with us regarding our intellectual property, and we may not have adequate remedies for any such breach. We also realize that our trade secrets may become known through other means not currently foreseen by us. Notwithstanding our efforts to protect our intellectual property, our competitors may be able to develop products that are equal or superior to our products without infringing on any of our intellectual property rights.

Our products employ technology that may infringe on the proprietary rights of third parties, which may expose us to litigation

     Third parties may assert that our products infringe their proprietary rights, or may assert claims for indemnification resulting from infringement claims against us. Any such claims may cause us to delay or cancel shipment of our products, which could harm our business. In addition, irrespective of the validity or the successful assertion of claims, we could incur significant costs in defending against claims. To date, we have not incurred any such claims.

We are dependent on proprietary technology licensed from third parties, the loss of which could delay shipments of products incorporating this technology and could be costly

     Some of the technology used by our products is licensed from third parties, generally on a nonexclusive basis. We believe that there are alternative sources for each of the material components of technology we license from third parties. However, the termination of any of these licenses, or the failure of the third-party licensors to adequately maintain or update their products, could result in delay in our ability to ship these products while we seek to implement technology offered by alternative sources. Any required replacement licenses could prove costly. Also, any delay, to the extent it becomes extended or occurs at or near the end of a fiscal quarter, could harm our quarterly results of operations. While it may be necessary or desirable in the future to obtain other licenses relating to one or more of our products or relating to current or future technologies, we cannot assure you that we will be able to do so on commercially reasonable terms or at all.

Potential acquisitions may have unexpected consequences or impose additional costs on us

     Our business is highly competitive and our growth is dependent upon market growth and our ability to enhance our existing products and introduce new products on a timely basis. One of the ways we may address the need to develop new products is through acquisitions of complementary businesses and technologies. From time to time, we consider and evaluate potential business combinations both involving our acquisition of another company and transactions involving the sale of Verity through, among other things, a possible merger or consolidation of our business into that of another entity. Acquisitions involve numerous risks, including the following:

	•		difficulties in integration of the operations, technologies, and products of the acquired companies;
	•		the risk of diverting management’s attention from normal daily operations of the business;
	•		accounting consequences, including changes in purchased research and development expenses, resulting in variability in our quarterly earnings;
	•		potential difficulties in completing projects associated with purchased in-process research and development;
	•		risks of entering markets in which we have no or limited direct prior experience and where competitors in these markets have stronger market positions;
	•		the potential loss of key employees of the acquired company; and
	•		the assumption of unforeseen liabilities of the acquired company.

     We cannot assure you that our future acquisitions will be successful and will not adversely affect our business. We must also maintain our ability to manage any growth effectively. Failure to manage growth effectively and successfully integrate acquisitions we make could harm our business.

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Risks Related to Our Industry

We depend on increasing use of the Internet, intranets, extranets and portals and on the growth of electronic commerce. If the use of the Internet, intranets, extranets and portals and electronic commerce do not grow as anticipated, our business will be seriously harmed

     The products of most of our customers depend on the increased acceptance and use of the Internet as a medium of commerce and on the development of corporate intranets, extranets and portals. As a result, acceptance and use may not continue to develop at historical rates and a sufficiently broad base of business customers may not adopt or continue to use the Internet as a medium of commerce. The lack of such development would impair demand for our products and would adversely affect our ability to sell our products. Demand and market acceptance for recently introduced services and products over the Internet and the development of corporate intranets, extranets and portals are subject to a high level of uncertainty, and there exist few proven services and products.

     The business of most of our customers would be seriously harmed if:

	•		use of the Internet, the Web and other online services does not continue to increase or increases more slowly than expected;
	•		the infrastructure for the Internet, the Web and other online services does not effectively support expansion that may occur; or
	•		the Internet, the Web and other online services do not create a viable commercial marketplace, inhibiting the development of electronic commerce and reducing the need for our products and services.

Capacity constraints may restrict the use of the Internet as a commercial marketplace, which would restrict our growth

     The Internet may not be accepted as a viable long-term commercial marketplace for a number of reasons. These include:

	•		potentially inadequate development of the necessary communication and network infrastructure, particularly if rapid growth of the Internet continues;
	•		delayed development of enabling technologies and performance improvements;
	•		delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols; and
	•		increased governmental regulation.

     Our ability to grow our business is dependent on the growth of the Internet and, consequently, any adverse events would impair our ability to grow our business.

Security risks and concerns may deter the use of the Internet for conducting electronic commerce, which would adversely affect the demand for our products

     A significant barrier to electronic commerce and communications is the secure transmission of confidential information over public networks. Advances in computer capabilities, new discoveries in the field of cryptography or other events or developments could result in compromises or breaches of our security systems or those of other web sites to protect proprietary information. If any well-publicized compromises of security were to occur, it could have the effect of substantially reducing the use of the Internet for commerce and communications, resulting in reduced demand for our products, thus adversely affecting our revenues.

Security risks expose us to additional costs and to litigation

     Anyone who circumvents our security measures could misappropriate proprietary information or cause interruptions in our services or operations. The Internet is a public network, and data is sent over this network from many sources. In the past, computer viruses, software programs that disable or impair computers, have been distributed and have rapidly spread over the Internet. We may be required to expend significant capital and other resources to protect against the threat of security breaches or to alleviate problems caused by breaches. To the extent that our activities may involve the storage and transmission of proprietary information, such as

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credit card numbers, security breaches could expose us to a risk of loss or litigation and possible liability. Our security measures may be inadequate to prevent security breaches, and our business would be harmed if we do not prevent them.

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

The market price of our common stock will fluctuate and you may lose all or part of your investment

     Our common stock is quoted for trading on the Nasdaq National Market. The market price for our common stock may continue to be highly volatile for a number of reasons including:

	•		future announcements concerning Verity or its competitors;
	•		quarterly variations in operating results;
	•		announcements of technological innovations;
	•		the introduction of new products or changes in product pricing policies by us or competitors;
	•		proprietary rights or other litigation; and
	•		changes in earnings estimates by analysts or other factors.

     In addition, stock prices for many technology companies fluctuate widely for reasons, which may be unrelated to operating results. These fluctuations, as well as general economic, market and political conditions such as recessions, terrorist attacks or military conflicts, may materially and adversely affect the market price of our common stock.

We have implemented certain anti-takeover provisions that may prevent or delay an acquisition of Verity that might be beneficial to our stockholders

     Provisions of our certificate of incorporation and bylaws, as well as provisions of Delaware law, could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us, even if doing so would be beneficial to our stockholders. These provisions include:

	•		establishment of a classified board of directors such that not all members of the board may be elected at one time;
	•		the ability of the board of directors to issue without stockholder approval up to 1,999,995 shares of preferred stock to increase the number of outstanding shares and thwart a takeover attempt;
	•		no provision for cumulative voting in the election of directors, which would otherwise allow less than a majority of stockholders to elect director candidates;