Next iteration....

"But the grant of a license was perhaps a temporary license until they could figure out how much the permanent licenses should be. Here we can assume the MOU was an agreement to obtain a license, probably spelling out how much per unit. But total units needed to be aggregated. Perhaps independent lab doing the work. I’m thinking TPL really may not have had a clue as to how much to demand for Toshiba and JVC licenses. Remember Toshiba's late doc dump in Japanese? A separation of the court case from the licensing event makes total sense to me. TPL provides temporary licenses on interim basis. Then financial impact of the settlement will be included in the 10Q. And it was."

Here, IMO, things fall apart to a degree, at least as you originally considered when coupled with the thoughts of my previous post. If they are only looking at FUTURE infringement, and here we're talking infringement until the patents expire, any "number" determined by any party would be no more than a "SWAG" (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) IMO. How do you predict sales of infringing product in the year 2015? In other words, the determination of PAST infringement would better fit your mold (tons of analysis), but there is no real method of determining FUTURE infringement with any confidence/degree of accuracy. If there were a predetermined, agreed, royalty-per-unit amount/factor, what do you apply that factor against? A prediction of future sales of infringing product? Hardly definitive....

Perhaps I should revisit your original thought - that they are/were indeed trying to come up with numbers for past infringement. But I still have a rough time with this.

Do you believe that our team went to any real great lengths to come up with a settlement number for other infringers? Even if they came up with a "hard number", it would be subject to negotiation. IMO, they looked, came to some conclusions as to magnitude (sense they never had access to sales figures or any real details, e.g., profit per unit), and came up with a ballpark figure that they considered reasonable for initiating negotiations. Then that number was inevitably negotiated down to something acceptable to the infringer, and our team. Standard negotiations. Ask high, accept something less. A "hard number" is essentially useless, IMO, other than to form a baseline.

Having said that, the court setting may make a difference - if they had gone to trial. In that scenario, I suspect they'd have to come up with a hard number for PAST infringement - something to sell the jury.

Bottom line for me is that the calculation scenario you describe, coupled with the thoughts of my prior post, would have to have to do with calculating ongoing royalties for FUTURE infringement. Or, I should say, getting set up for same - establishing the mechanisms to maintain level of usage visibility to which the pre-determined factor would be applied. This would take some time, IMO, especially when considering the need for "independent" visibility to perhaps a third party in order to restrict visibility from competitors. Quite the ball of wax, riddled with complexities rendering such an agreement a bit hard for me to swallow. Why? There would still have to be a huge "trust" factor. Are the numbers the infringer is providing truly accurate? How would you ever know? Also, the cost of developing and maintaining such a system would, IMO, be prohibitive. Such systems can get real expensive, real fast. Are you (Mr. Infringer) willing to spend potentially millions per year just to determine how many more millions you'll actually have to pay? And this hits "our side" as well (and is probably the reason why we have not seen much in the way of an ongoing royalty scheme).

Now I apologize, because my discussion is getting convoluted to where even I am having a rough maintaining the train of thought! But hopefully this is providing food for thought towards theory refinement....

The only thing I'm compelled to add here is the thought that IF there were DEFINITELY more money coming from the Js, in any (yet-to-be-determined) amount, SOMETHING would have to have been stated to this effect in the 10Q. This is where the delusional USPTO Contingency Theory held a little water. If the outcome, and thus the receipt of more money, were a complete "unknown" (in absolute terms), there IMO would be no requirement to report anything. But DEFINITE money, in an unknown amount(s), IMO, would have to be reported in some fashion. Such would be material to viewing PTSC as an investment.

I sure hope this is helping a bit, and not just generating migrains.

SGE