My question to Hawk

Is the current lull in licensing activity directly related to the USPTO review?

Response from Ken

There are several factors that might influence the rate at which licenses are secured and that the USPTO review could certainly be one of them. How significant of a factor it may be we don't know.

What I get from this response is that while some companies may be waiting for the USPTO review results to come to the table, that event has not been expressly incorporated into any settlement discussions. The question then becomes is that a good or bad thing?

Good: Maybe nobody is considering it to be that big of a deal so no reason to expressly make it part of settlement discussions.

Bad: I think we were all hoping for it to be a triggering event and that companies were lined up just waiting for that validation.

I guess it could still be the case that some companies are waiting to see what happens with USPTO before they sign on the dotted line and it could still be a triggering event, it is just not going to be automatic or as powerful a trigger as we were hoping. As usual, we are left with having to wait and see what happens with nothing concrete to go on.