Redmeat re exercise price on Merritt's options exercise
Yes stock options all have an exercise or strike price. Almost always the exercise price is the fair market value of the stock on the date that the stock option is granted. Most all of IDCC's option grants have a ten-year expiration date from the date of grant. Yes the company does receive the option exercise price in cash. (RSUs do not have an exercise price, and thus the company receives no cash from the recipients on RSUs.)
Merritt's F4 did not indicate the strike price on his exercised options. Some F4s do indicate the exercise prices. We do know from the F4 that Merritt sold the 20,000 shares thus exercised on June 28 at sale prices ranging between $18.35 to $18.82 per share.
We also know from the F4 that 10,000 of the exercised options expired on 12/17/05, 6,000 of the exercised options expired on 3/11/09, and that 4,000 of the exercised options expired on 12/17/10. Therefore to approximate Merritt's exercise prices on these exercised options, you would need to get IDCC's stock price ten years earlier from each of the indicated expiration dates.