They could absolutely settle before the initial determination. These multi-billion dollar corporations consider legal fees today as operational overhead baked into the annual budget. What is 10 or 20 or 30 million a year in IP legal fees? There are many, many reasons and strategies. Certainly, message board layman won't understand them and can't predict settlements or not. I also enjoyed the replies to Greg Bailey's post. I thoroughly enjoyed the humor in it. I found the replies some what funny. I'm not sure many understand the league Mr. Bailey is in.