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.)

Apple is appealing a $302 million jury verdict from the Eastern District of Texas that grew to $440 million with enhanced damages, costs, attorneys fees and interest. VirnetX is defending the judgment while challenging a series of PTO actions brought by Apple and other entities that invalidated claims from the four patents at issue, which relate to secure online communications.