A company with little business beyond a handful of recently purchased patents sued Google last year. That's not at all unusual; what is unusual is that the company, Vringo, is actually going to trial—starting this morning in Norfolk, Virginia. Vringo will be asking for a nine-figure verdict, and its investors have a nontrivial chance of getting rich from this trial.

The hype around the Vringo trial is almost as remarkable as the trial itself, full of surprising investments and wild claims.

The first came in late March, when tech investor James Altucher wrote a TechCrunch story with a provocative title: "Why Google Might Be Going to $0." In it, he laid out the history of the patents that Vringo had purchased. The lead inventor was Ken Lang, an early Lycos employee who is also a friend of Altucher. While early search engines like Lycos, Altavista, and Excite all fell by the wayside during the 2000s, it was Google that thrived—and now owed money because of the Lang patent.

The two patents in suit, 6,314,420 and 6,775,664, claim to describe systems that are key to Google's success. According to the complaint [PDF], they cover a process of keying advertisements to user search queries, as well as incorporating certain user feedback, such as which ads get clicked on, into the system of filtering future listings.

Altucher went on to express his confidence that the patent crusade against Google would surely result in riches for Vringo investors. "$67 billion in revenues from this patent," wrote Altucher. "Imagine: double that in the next ten years. Imagine: triple damages." Faced with such risks, Google would surely settle, Altucher said.

Turned out that Altucher was wrong—probably wrong about the enormous patent revenue potential, and definitely wrong about Google settling. Equally inaccurate were the fever dreams of other vocal investors, "Vringo longs" who believed that Google would agree to an NTP-sized settlement on the courthouse steps. The search giant has made the decision to fight "patent trolls" down to the wire before, whether it made short-term economic sense or not; and here it is clearly prepared to do so again.

But the hype was enough to convince many that Vringo was worth putting money into. In April, well-known investor Mark Cuban bought a 7 percent stake in the firm, a company that would seem to be exactly the type of patent troll Cuban has railed against. Cuban described the purchase as a "hedge against the unlimited patent risk every company I have an investment in faces."

Stock shoots up, as investors hope for a settlement that hasn't come

Google had a major setback on Oct. 3, when it lost its motion for summary judgment. That ensured the search giant would face a jury, and Vringo stock shot up 70 percent. Today, it's down slightly off that mark, but has remained at historically high levels. Some Vringo investors may believe the company is really going to win its lawsuit; others, meanwhile, are surely just betting that a lot of people will think Vringo will win. The second group may be hoping to just let others run up the stock during trial, and then jump ship at a propitious moment.

The true hope of many Vringo investors is that Google will simply settle or buy the smaller company. That's the outcome that would get them paid right away. Even a big trial win against Google could be appealed; there would be a long, winding road ahead before a check gets written.

Vringo enthusiasts have been writing about how Google might settle the case since this summer, and even this week as the trial commences, hoping for a quick (but sizeable) payout.

Hopes of a big verdict may be overblown, but can't be dismissed out of hand, given the vicissitudes of a patent trial. Estimates emerged a few months ago that Vringo is going to ask for almost $700 million, plus interest. (The actual damages demand is sealed at this point.) The judge has banned Vringo from making a case for "wilfulness" at trial, which could have tripled any damages the company won; that's probably an attempt to push the parties towards settlement. Still, there's still plenty of room for Vringo to make a big damages ask.

Vringo stock is now trading at $4.66 per share; that's up 370% since the beginning of the year. Some investors are dreaming of the stock price hitting $35 or even $70 following a settlement or a court win.

Claim construction, a key phase of the litigation, largely went Vringo's way. The judge in this case, Judge Raymond Jackson of the Eastern District of Virginia, has overseen a few patent cases in his day, according to a report written by Dan Ravicher, director of the Public Patent Foundation. Those include ActiveVideo v. Verizon. In that case, a small patent plaintiff won $115 million from Verizon, and the judge tacked on another $24 million after trial. Those numbers held up on appeal, as well.

The patents that Vringo has purchased originated at Lycos—a company with actual history in search, not just a random patent troll crawling out of the woodwork.

Vringo is also well lawyered-up—it's represented by Dickstein Shapiro, one of the biggest law firms taking on work for small patent plaintiffs these days, with a few very large wins under its belt. The company isn't going to stop with Google, either. Vringo filed suit last week against Chinese cell phone company ZTE.

The company isn't just about patent lawsuits. Vringo has a "video ringtone" business that has more than 200,000 subscribers, mostly through foreign carriers in smaller countries, like Turkey, Malaysia, the UAE and Armenia.

That business is woefully unprofitable, however. Vringo has lost $37.5 million since its founding. Today it has 24 full-time employees and bleeds out nearly a half million dollars a month.

"Every NPE [non-practicing entity] wants to say they have a business," said Ravicher in an interview with Ars about the Vringo litigation. "But it's like going into a restaurant and hearing the waitresses tell you how they're all actresses. It just increases the chance of them getting an injunction."

Vringo purchased I/P Engine, the patent-holding company that owned the patents at issue in this case, earlier this year. It's also suing AOL, Gannett, Target, and IAC for using Google search technology, but the main damages claim at trial will be directed at Google.