According to Bloomberg, Palm is for sale, and the top candidate might not be somebody you’d expect. HTC is currently the target of an Apple lawsuit claiming 20 counts of patent infringement on iPhone IP. Buying Palm could give Google’s handset maker of choice the patents it needs to fight the Apple suit. Smart play, fellas.

HTC isn’t looking for hardware – it needs an operating system. As it stands, only Google and Apple have what is considered a modern mobile operating system (sorry, RIM, you aren’t even close). Unfortunately, HTC would probably only use the purchase to give it enough patents for a war with Apple, not because it actually thinks WebOS will go anywhere. Palm didn’t sell nearly enough handsets to keep the world interested in WebOS.

HTC wants to avoid is a costly licensing settlement with Apple that could affect profits far into the future. Spending several hundred million dollars on a dying company could be the cheap alternative it’s been looking for.