Qualcomm acquires Palm, other patent portfolios from HP
Chipmaker Qualcomm just announced that it's acquired 1,400 granted and pending US patents and another 1,000 foreign patents from HP. Those include "fundamental mobile operating system techniques" and come from a collection of patent portfolios that include those of once-great smartphone manufacturer Palm. The sale comes just months after the announcement that HP sold Palm's operating system, WebOS to LG, and more than a year after HP put the failed TouchPad tablet to rest. HP's relationship with Palm and the technology that it brought to the table has been a sordid one. Former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein even went as far as to call the sale to HP a waste during an interview last summer, months after he joined Qualcomm's board of directors. The company also acquired patent portfolios from HP's iPAQ PDA business and Bitfone, a mobile enterprise software company that it acquired in 2006.
