Today, Palm’s share price dropped about 8%.  Some attribute this to the remarks of Tim Cook, current de facto leader of Apple during yesterday’s Apple earning call with analysts. Here is what Tim Cook said:

“We are watching the landscape.  We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our intellectual property. And if they do, we’re going to go after anybody that does. I don’t want to talk about any specific company. I’m just making a general statement that we think competition is good. It makes us all better and we’re ready to suit up and go up against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our intellectual property ripped off and we’ll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal.”

Cook did not identify any particular company. But if that wasn’t enough, MacDailyNews points to this quote:

We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling iPhone, January 9, 2007

Disclosure: I am long in Apple stock.