I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't need any Palm patents for anything, considering their Newton device had a ton or IP and predates the Palm products. I can't see too much coming over from the older Palm IP that would be useful for the iPhone and iPods. On the other hand, I think Palm is definitely going to step on some Apple patents at some point. Anyway, all that's moot, since I wasn't inferring any patent issues. My personal belief is also that all software patents should be eliminated and that no patents ever be issued on software again, but that's a topic for another time.

Palm are reporting their device as being an Apple product. That includes using the trademarks "Apple" and 'iPod" in their product strings. They are also violating USB rules by misrepresenting their product's descriptors. Pretty sure you won't find a USB logo on the Palm product since you're not allowed to use one if you break the USB agreements.

This tactic is completely different than browsers lying. Browsers aren't leveraging the IP of another company when they misrepresent their IDs. BTW, I'm not aware that any current browser does this anymore anyway. It's frowned upon in the browser domain, but in this case it's a matter of a hardware vendor trying to promote their product by leveraging the millions of dollars spent by Apple on iTunes. They're leveraging both Apple's development efforts as well as marketing efforts. So Palm are trying to get for free what other vendors must pay licensing fees for (iPod accessories).

This is their line of thinking "Why bother developing our own software when we can just use Apple's?" - Why didn't they do the same thing to be able to use the Zune software? Why did they do anything at all considering mass storage mode allows manual copying?

They're trying to ride Apple's coat tales here and IMO, they need to pay some financial reparations to make this right. I'm sure Apple won't accept any money from them and will simply maintain that iTunes supports only iPods. It's easy enough to make the Pre stop working with iTunes, it's just a matter of how this will play out in the media in my opinion. Will Apple look evil? And are they willing to take that chance?