[davnicwil]

Your last point has me thinking - hypothetically if an individual were in this situation, could they sell 'equity' in the eventual settlement in order to take money off the table now, rather than go bankrupt from legal expenses etc and get nothing?

E.g. Sell 50% of the initially ruled $1.1B settlement for, say, $100MM.

Anything like this ever happened?

[dlgeek]

Yes. The term you want to search for is litigation finance.

[paul7986]

The patent game more then a 100 years ago was great for the sole inventor. Now it's a game that's insanely & wrongfully stacked against those folks. Nowadays you need a war chest behind you to secure patents and even worse fight for your rights in court against another war chest that will litigate for years and years until someone's war chest is depleted or almost depleted.

[RobLach]

https://www.lexshares.com/

[froindt]

Planet Money had an episode on it this fall.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766556249/episode-942-capital...