You may remember a few months back when Apple sued HTC for patent infringement. The case centered mostly around HTC's Android phones. Long story short, it looked a little grim for the relatively young HTC, though it will still likely take years for the case to run its course. But now HTC is coming out swinging, and has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) against Apple for infringing five of their patents. HTC has asked the ITC to ban imports of the iPhone, iPad , and iPod Touch. This is a common request in these cases.

According to GIzmodo (though not yet confirmed), two of the patents are related to power management, two are for personalized phone dialers, and one is for a dialer with special memory access. Apple threw everything they had at HTC, and by comparison this is small potatoes. It could be HTC is attempting to extract a cross-licensing deal from Apple, or just get them to call it a day. No corresponding federal lawsuit has been filed as of yet, but that could be coming too. We'll keep an eye on this one folks.

Image via Engadget

It wasn't totally unexpected, but it's still jarring to hear Bloomberg reporting that Palm is up for sale. The maker of the WebOS-packing Pre smartphone seemed resurgent just a year ago, but lackluster sales have resulted in poor stock performance and anxious invertors. Palm is said to be working with Goldman Sachs Group to shop around to perspective buyers. Among the possible suitors are Lenovo and HTC.

Just a few weeks ago Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein seemed defiant saying, " I am still confident that our talented team has what it takes to get the job done." But it seems the last few quarter have made their course clear. The speculation is that HTC would be particularly interested in Palm for their large patent portfolio, which could help fend off a suit from Apple. Of course, we wouldn't put it past Apple to buy up Palm to get those patents in Cupertino. Also, Steve Jobs would probably love to fire Rubinstein out of spite.

If nothing else, the acquisition talk has helped Palm's sagging stock price. It's risen over 32% in the past week on news of a sale. As for what this means for the future of WebOS, no one can say. It's possible a buyer could scrap the whole company. Any Pre or Pixi owners out there? If your updates stop flowing, will you move on or stick it out hoping for community support?