I too believe that it would be in Google’s best interest to move quickly to quietly settle out of court before more recognition is brought out to more major investors that are heavily invested into Google. If this starts to get to ugly, it could cause their major investors to pass certain judgment against Google that I’m sure they would not want. There is a way they could do this without admitting guilt, especially if they truly know of their guilt.
I was in PTSC a while back that went after Intel for patent infringement and won. The stock went from the .03/.04 per share range to $2.20 per share area. It ended up being some kind of a settlement to where I think they even had gotten a licensing deal to go along with it.
Google has indicated in some statements that strongly suggests that they could very well be guilty of some patent infringements and would likely have to pay as indicated within their most recent 10-Q filed on July 25, 2017 on Page 23 below:
We have had patent, copyright, and trademark infringement lawsuits filed against us claiming that certain of our products, services, and technologies infringe the intellectual property rights of others. Adverse results in these lawsuits may include awards of substantial monetary damages, costly royalty or licensing agreements, or orders preventing us from offering certain features, functionalities, products, or services, and may also cause us to change our business practices, and require development of non-infringing products or technologies, which could result in a loss of revenues for us and otherwise harm our business. In addition, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has increasingly become an important forum to litigate intellectual property disputes because an ultimate loss for a company or its suppliers in an ITC action could result in a prohibition on importing infringing products into the U.S. Because the U.S. is an important market, a prohibition on importation could have an adverse effect on us, including preventing us from importing many important products into the U.S. or necessitating workarounds that may limit certain features of our products. ...