I think that’s just a statement of reality. Which is what the judge said, when he said it would be unfortunate if companies couldn’t discuss the reality of this in negotiations.
For example, say I make $50m a year profit from operations in the USA. Then, whether guilty or not, if a US company gets an inflated judgement against me of ten years profits, my response is obvious. Especially if the US arm is a subsidiary company, I’ll just bankrupt it and trade elsewhere. Why waste an entire decade making zero profit?
So I’d imagine the negotiations were about the two companies coming to a reasonable settlement, or Motorola getting nothing. Although a lot of these huge jury decided penalties get reduced on appeal anyway.
Or, if the trade secrets really are close to that valuable, to get the company to hand them back or agree to pay a mutually acceptable global license fee.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
