• Palm acquires Handspring and Ed Colligan, one of the original core founders of Palm, who then became Handspring's CEO, is now Palm's CEO.

• PalmSource, which was originally a division doing the OS work, is now to be a separate company that produces the OS and licenses it back to Palm.

• For some reason, PalmSource and Palm share the Palm trademark through an entity called the Palm Trademark Holding Company. PalmSource (the smaller spin-off OS company) holds 55% ownership of the Palm trademark.

• When all this happens back in 2003, Palm changes it's name to palmOne, ostensibly to show that it's combining Handspring and Palm, but also because we'll later learn it no longer has the right to use the name Palm as a company name.

Why did the OS spin-off occur as a connected element to the acquisition of Handspring? If you're a large company spinning off a subsidiary, why would you give that small subsidiary 55% ownership of your primary trademark? Why wouldn't you just license them the right to use it? Why was Palm, Inc. forced to change its name, yet again, to palmOne? Why couldn't PalmSource come up with a different name (especially since PalmSource was also the name for the Palm developer tradeshow)?

It's all very strange.

Let's jump forward to May 2005. In May, palmOne announced that it had acquired (or re-acquired?) full rights to the Palm name. According to press accounts, palmOne agreed to pay PalmSource $30 million for PalmSource's 55% share of the Palm Trademark Holding Company, to be paid in installments over 3.5 years. Since then, Palm changed its name back to Palm from palmOne. My understanding is that Palm (then palmOne) granted PalmSource rights to use certain aspects of the Palm trademarks for a four-year transition period. Which, by the way, means it's likely that the Palm OS will cease being called the Palm OS sometime in 2009.

Why did this all have to happen to begin with? It's as if you bought a house, transfered its ownership to your 13 year old kid, and two years later, bought the garage back from your kid. It's just not normal. In the housing world, the only reason you'd do that is if you were trying to hide something, get out of something, or you were just plain full-goose-bozo.

Also in May, PalmSource's CEO David Nagel suddenly resigned with no reason given. Nagel was picked to run PalmSource from the beginning of the spin-out, but suddenly he's out. Is it a coincidence that this happened at the exact same time the trademark was bought back by Palm?

Tracking the rumor and intrigue surrounding PalmSource is a hobby all its own. In a March 2003 interview with Tony Perkins, Nobuyuki Idei, Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation stated he wanted to buy the Palm OS. Specifically, he told Perkins:

I really want to own either Symbian or Palm -- I want to buy them. Three years ago the Palm was so simple, but it is getting better and better. My problem now is that as Palm licensee we have to pay them lots of money. Palm is like Apple -- we don't know if they are a software company or a hardware company.