The outcome here may become a clarification of what vested shares means. If I'm not mistaken, vested shares evolved out of the practice of just giving shares to

The outcome here may become a clarification of what vested shares means. If I'm not mistaken, vested shares evolved out of the practice of just giving shares to employees at the start in order to guarantee that they wouldn't just take the shares and run. If this is deemed legal it will probably eventually become standard and vested shares will become negotiable. If this happens, what are vested shares anyway? What would be the difference between vested shares and just issuing shares (or options) periodically?