my reading of the SEC filing was that their was an agreement to "In addition, the parties agreed to forever settle, resolve and dispose of all claims, demands and causes of action asserted, existing or claimed to exist between the parties because of or in any way related to the Action"
the action; "alleged misappropriation and theft of trade secrets, breach of contract, and breach of an implied warranty of good faith. The Action stemmed from dealings between the parties in 2002."
litigating for past royalties, as well as using this action as leverage to sign long term licensing agreements could be one main avenue to get what is coming to RWT. The difficulty, it seems, is proving that ABB is currently using, or has used this technology since 2002; as well as determining a fair market value for the licensing/royalties for said use. I assume that if ABB settled, they were likely to be guilty of using this their patents or processes. with that said who knows if this was even a case of patent infringement, or just ABB stealing a process or lines of computer code. if patent infringement, then clearly there is a case to be made for litigation. i guess only the company really knows, but it would be interesting to see what comes of it... the fact that they settled this case for such a small sum begs the question whether they thought they had an adequate shot of winning. the one thing the settlement does not address is statement such as "ABB claims no guilt as a a result of the settlement"... interesting questions for sure... an insider would only really know for sure. i can't even find the patents they own on the US Patent Website -- i'd be curious to see what they are for... and if ABB was using them, are they using a process that is only *slighty* different than the specifications of the original patent....
