Palm CEO Ed Colligan says that despite the posturing from his company and Apple, there aren't any pending legal actions over patents. Apple CFO and acting CEO Tim Cook stated that his company will aggressively defend its patents, which many saw as a warning shot at Palm and its upcoming Pre smartphone.

During Apple's first quarter earnings conference call, Mr. Cook said that the company won't "stand to have our IP ripped off," in reference to the iPhone. Since Palm's unreleased Pre smartphone sports many iPhone-like features, the general assumption was that Mr. Cook sending a thinly veiled warning.

Palm representatives have said that if there ever was a court battle over patents that the company would be able to hold its own against Apple.

"The reason you do that is to have a defensive position," Mr. Colligan said. "It's like two little porcupines going around, and you don't want to touch each other because you might get stung. You peacefully coexist and everything's OK and you keep working together. We're very respectful about people's intellectual property, we believe we're huge innovators and have been for a lot of years and that this product has an enormous number of innovations in it."

He added that "nothing's happened to date, so we're really just focused on getting the product out the door."

[Thanks to PreCentral.net for the heads up.]