Palm and its smartphones may be dead, but its patents still live on, and Apple is ready to buy some.
Apple has reached an agreement with ACCESS Co. Ltd. to purchase patents worth $10 million, most of which belong to Palm and PalmSource, while the rest are from companies such as Bell Communications and Geoworks.
The move will give Apple some extra weapons against its smartphone rivals. Palm OS, which is created by PalmSource, which is owned by ACCESS, has been used in more than 36 million devices since 1996. So Apple now has access to some older patents that have already been tested in the market.
And while Palm failed to deliver an answer to the iPhone, webOS has received many positive reviews, and is the inspiration behind several multi-tasking jailbreak tweaks for the iPhone. Unfortunately, webOS was sold to LG, so Apple can't bring features from the operating system to iOS.
