Instead, Boston settled for $55.3 million. Its wireless-carrier co-defendants, Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Alltel, will pay an additional $32 million to Freedom. Verizon Wireless had previously settled with Freedom Wireless at undisclosed terms.

Boston Communication's stock price had been hammered by the jury verdict. In an unusual provision of the settlement agreement,  prescient on Freedom Wireless' part, Boston will pay Freedom 5% of any realized average stock price appreciation for the first six months of 2007 as compared with the first half of 2006.

The street applauded the settlement. Friday, the stock price of Boston Communication more than doubled: $1.92 to $4.01.

Freedom Wireless was founded by Phoenix entrepreneurs Douglas Fougnies and Larry Day, to pursue monetizing their patent properties after the cash line on their first wireless company went dead.

Boston Communications had plowed $27 million in wasted legal fees to fight the infringement assertion, and was facing bankruptcy if its appeal failed. Boston CEO E.Y. Snowden, epiphany from pyrrhic idiocy behind him, wept with joy: "I'm very, very happy to have this behind us."

The SEC is investigating questionable dating of stock options granted to Snowden, timings estimated by the Wall Street Journal to have a probability of one in five million. None of the options were exercised because of the patent suit pushing the stock price in the dumpster, but the losing streak for Boston Communications may not yet be over.