If it`s true that Asian customers don`t like have suppliers with legal issues handing over their head, One could expect that Intel would be under pressure to settle and not take an eye towards stretching this out.

Hopefully Patriot will be eage to settle. But I guess they can continue to dilute and live off Swartz for quite a few more years. But if they do that, they`ll be stuck with a pool of @ 1B shares outstanding, and expenses to right the ship (reverse)if they stay independent. I`m not smiling right now knowing we`re sitting on 400M of shares, and will be smiling a heck ovalot less if its 200 M more by the end of 2005.

Another wild card (assuming we get a positive ruling in these preliminaries) is that we just don`t know Patriots mindset in what THEY see as reasonable settlement costs. We`ve heard $100M knocked around, maybe that was just an example number, not representative of what Patriot would percieve as reasonable...we just dont know. If the ruling is decisive enough, Patriot may decide to play chicken with Intel and go for the jugular, looking for as high a settlement price as possible. The golden rule is in force here, but the question is if Patriot gets past Fogel, whether we`re holding 12, 18 or 24 Carat in value...

All IMHO, for entertainment purposes only while we sit round the campfire, listening to the wolves howl.

Regards