I'll play the other side for a moment here.
The judge is extremely pro small company with a patent. His career was made working for these guys.
There are cases where the infringement judgement comes in before the IPR is done. The IPR is then dropped, so patentability becomes a non issue.
With the big judgement in the VLSI case, Intel may be more prone to settle this one to avoid a repeat.
However, as you point out even with the big settlement against NEO, the company still has nothing.
Alan