Palm's Woes

 Palm has released a make-or-break product, the Pre, which has received good reviews, but Apple is claiming  Palm may have infringed some of the 200 patents tit says it has filed with regards to the user experience on the iPhone.  If true,  Apple is likely to file a law suit seeking to prevent the sale of the Palm Pre in the US, says Nomura's Richard Windsor.  "The worst part of it is that the merit, relevance and infringement of the patent is probably going to be irrelevant," Windsor says in a research note.  But Palm simply cannot afford to fight a protracted legal battle and to have its few engineers tied up with infringement issues when they should be developing product. Windsor concludes that should Apple file against the Pre when it begins shipping, the company could easily be forced out of business before infringement issues are resolved.