It may be months before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit resolves a $440 million patent dispute between Apple Inc. and VirnetX Inc. Yet the stock market declared VirnetX the winner of Tuesday’s oral arguments.

Publicly-traded VirnetX Holding Corp.’s stock price spiked 65 percent on Tuesday, with most of the increase occurring during the 2 hours and 15 minutes of hearings. (The stock gave back about half of those gains on Wednesday.)