i agree, without the rr there wont be any settlement, we have seen about 4 settlement conferences, i don't know why they think it will happen and judge jackson has not ruled on anything meaningful. The Royalty rate would make a conference mean something, right now its as useless as all the other court mandated attempts, only thing settled was more wasted time. For this reason, i think the judge will rule on something before then to make it meaningful, he cant be that foolish and willing to waste time, how is this efficient use of the courts time and resources. We see how far apart both sides are, its not a joke, and google has not been given any reason to stop wasting time, the royalty rate that was ripe since last summer. atleast say this is the royalty rate and it either goes until the work around started if valid or until the patents expired if the workaround is not valid, thats how you go into a settlement. A highschool kid can see this, google doesn't care, they have billions to waste, the court should not be giving the infringer what google has been getting.On the bright side, we have amazing things coming out of courts all over the world for vringo, germany and india. The important thing is that vringo is executing like the legal bosses we know they are, it looks like nothing much is going on with the waiting, but clearly there are things moving underneath the ground that are worth hundreds of millions individually.