Either TPL/Alliacence & PTSC are lying, or the J3 PURCHASED licenses case closed.

From Lite-On-It PR it states:

"Lite-On IT has become the 26th company to purchase an MMP License"

and from today's Verigy PR, it states:

"Since January 2006 over 30 global companies from the US, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan have purchased MMP Portfolio licenses."

The only way to get from 26 to over 30 is to add Alpine, Matsushita, NEC, Toshiba and Verigy.  There is NO other explanation.  You can question how it was/will be paid and how much, but unless you believe they are lying, licenses were SOLD to the J3.

As for your theory that the settlements are tied in some way to the USPTO, I can only ask you WHY would TPL/PTSC agree to that.  Not to be dismissive, but I think that theory is bunk.