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.)