IMHO,
Delroy is right... ZTE will settle soon. Probably within the next 45 days....
On ST there was a link posted to another patent recently assigned to VRNG by Nokia.
It's for cdma 2000 / 3G infrastructure... (i.e., older tech).... If I can find it again, I'll post the link...
Hmmm....
Why??
Most plausible answer:
ZTE is facing the reality that the only way out of this jam is to acquiesce to what Vringo has been requesting: a global license to everything that Vringo has. ( That means big bucks! >$200m)
So, ZTE is no doubt saying, "if we do a global license, we need to make sure there is no other Nokia IP that's going to come back and bite us (be separately litigated)..." So Vringo calls up Nokia and says "we finally got them ready to take global license ... provided we include a couple of other patents in the mix for completeness..." And Nokia says "wow, so we'll get 35% of $x00m if we assign you a couple of old 3G patents that we thought had no value anymore??? OK !!!... And this will set the stage for Huawei and HTC etc to also do global licenses on similar terms?? Double OK OK !!!"
All along ZTE has thought that the worst case is that they will have to pay Vringo the $450m they have been seeking...
They've stalled, fought in court, sought to intimidate, negotiate, bribe, smuggle, etc. so they could operate with impunity without licenses in the hopes or weakening VRNG and settling for a fraction of the amount sought.
Now they are cornered and reality is sinking in... They have big plans for US market and NDA case will be expensive... They're getting hosed royally in Europe and the fun is only beginning in Brazil and India and Malaysia and Australia etc... So they're thinking "alright, we'll give you, say, $250m but we'll go through all the Nokia IP and make sure they include (assign over to VRNG) anything that could come back and bite us later so we have it under our global license..."
Time to load the boat.
We can debate whether you'll be able to buy it cheaper in the coming week or the following week (after ER)...
My strong suspicion is that no share will trade under $0.70 ever again -- but I've been wrong many times before on short term share price predictions... Either way, whether one is buying for $0.50/share or $1.00/share, we seem to be headed much higher later this year, probably in the next couple of months... Right on time for WoC to get filed in May...
Of course, this is all just speculation on my part.
I have NO first hand knowledge of any actual settlement discussions or Nokia's motivation for assigning IP to Vringo...
