Right now I am holding 1,000,000 shares and I am in the red. My plan, at this time, is to wait until the stock drops after Friday to buy some more. I am guessing that PM will file a MTD and it will freak everyone out and bring the panic selling, but in my experience, a MTD at this stage is not case ending. A MTD at this stage is usually just gamesmanship. I am not a stock analyst and I cannot predict what the stock will do, but that is what I would expect for Friday as a probably scenario. I think it is highly unlikely that PM would do a straight settlement at this stage, unless they saw the acquisition of the patent as a useful tool in their fight against Reynolds. Remember, Reynolds is trying to shut PM's IQOS down in the ITC using a Reynolds patent, so it would not be unusual for a company in PM's situation to acquire a patent as an offensive weapon to use against Reynolds in that situation in my opinion.
If PM does something like an IPR petition or brings a challenge under 101 under "Alice" then I will need to give it some thought. If they do not bring an IPR petition, I would take that as an indication that they do not have a lot of strong invalidating prior art which would be a good sign. But that would be somewhat speculative too.
In my experience, a settlement at this stage for any meaningful sum is highly unlikely. I am playing this long term. Early settlements happen, but they happen less often in these situations. And the earlier the settlement, the lower the settlement amount, unless there is some intangible perceived additional value, such as the scenario that I mentioned above where PM might want the patent to fight Reynolds. But who knows, Reynolds might also want the patent to bring further pressure on PM. Think about that? Reynolds is already trying to shut PM down. How about they acquire HCMC's patent and it is a further advantage over PM. If I worked at Reynolds that is what I would be doing. In doing that, Reynolds would gain an asset to bolster its fight against PM AND would also avoid a litigation by HCMC against Reynolds.
Again, just my thoughts here. I cannot tell the future. I am holding long.
