Well, we’ve already settled for peanuts with Samsung & LG (numbers 2 & 3); and we’re currently suing Nokia and HTC (numbers 1 & 9). That already accounts for the top 3 on the list. Hopefully DM is indeed raising the bar high enough to take full advantage of this market. We still have numbers 4 & 5 (RIM & Apple) on the list to go after in round 3 perhaps. As I write this, it’s interesting to see the article that DABOSS just posted about SmartPhones with RIM & Apple actually being numbers 1 & 2 in that market. Maybe there IS real hope here for round 3.

I’ve been thinking more about our chances of a favorable ruling and come to the conclusion that it’s very unlikely that we’ll get an altogether unfavorable ruling... causing DM to be left with virtually nothing that they could still work with. In other words: given the idea that some claims constructions might be a hybrid of the proposals, I highly doubt that ALL claims (or even the two supposed key claims) will go so totally against us that DM can not still move forward with a jury trial against the defendants.

Obviously the goal is to settle; however given the high cost of going to trial, I’ve got to think that DM would still push toward trial (even if the constructions were only 50% favorable), unless defendants agreed to settle for a reasonable amount. I can understand Fred Falk’s apparent remarks about the Markman ruling affecting settlement amounts; and my thought is that even if the ruling is less favorable than we’d like, I’m not so sure that HAS to mean that future settlements will be for next to nothing. Perhaps DM would lower the bar in such an event, but perhaps not so far as some might think. As trillium just said: DM is playing hardball.

My own OPINION is that we can reasonably expect an average of at least $2-3M settlement per defendant EVEN IF the Markman ruling doesn’t go entirely our way. That would still be significant in that our cash value would then roughly equal our current share price. So given that, there should be nowhere for us to go but UP!

- Sinkman