There are basically 2 ways to capture the TLCF.
1) The income produced off the assets over the years subsequent to the buy out. Each year the new company could offset those earnings against the credit until it is used up.
2) Prior to the buyout the IP asset can be marked up based on the deal value [the markup can not be more than the deal goodwill]. This has two effects. It first produces a taxable gain right then, but that gain is offset by the booked loss so does not need to be paid. Second, the asset will now depreciate over the coming years, causing a paper loss for the acquiring company that offsets other gains.
There are also rules on how much can be used in any year. And these are gross oversimplications.
The result of this both limits the amount that can be captured ad pushes out in time. Not only does this cause a time decay, but the carry forward will be expiring as years go by.
The present TLCF is estimated at $207M. If the trial is clearly successful and a buy out does happen it could increase the deal value by some fraction of that, probably only on the order of 10s of millions though, not $1B.
DNDN was an excellent example of how little it is actually worth. I do not have the actual numbers, but when Valeant bought them the deal was modified just prior to close to include the TLCF. This priced it at something like $20M (and they also had something like $1b losses over the years). With a known income producing assert they can be worth, but still not as much as the cash that could be saved on future taxes.
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