In california there is at-will employment so it's difficult to imagine that HP would have ever won their lawsuit which would have prevented Mark Hurd from working and "earning" a living as the state would have seen it. HP settled because it's the smart thing to do to get this behind the company and go on to focus on it own business. I'll be excited to see who they name eventually name as CEO and whether it's an insider or outsider.
They also had a large call center that were experts on selling over the phone. There are well documented reviews of how they were able to get so many deals for so cheap on the web. In my experience as a software engineer, talking to businesses about giving me offers is not what I want to do and terribly boring but many people love it. You need to find the right people.