Chipmaker Qualcomm just announced that it’s acquired 1,400 granted and pending US patents and another 1,000 foreign patents from HP. Those include “fundamental mobile operating system techniques” and come from a collection of patent portfolios that include those of once-great smartphone manufacturer Palm. The sale comes just months after the announcement that HP sold Palm’s operating system, WebOS to LG, and more than a year after HP put the failed TouchPad tablet to rest. HP’s relationship with Palm and the technology that it brought to the table has been a sordid one. Former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein even went as far as to call the sale to HP a waste during an interview last summer, months after he joined Qualcomm’s board of directors. The company also acquired patent portfolios from HP’s iPAQ PDA business and Bitfone, a mobile enterprise software company that it acquired in 2006.