There was a time in the last 15 years when the main mobile device people used wasn't an iPhone, or made by BlackBerry. Palm was the company changing the lives of people on the go with its line of popular PDAs. Palm's Treo smartphones were well regarded, but by the time the smartphone revolution was in full swing, it was falling behind. It ended up making an earnest run with WebOS — but a botched sale to HP finally sealed the company's fate.

The company as we knew it was put down by HP back in 2011, but Palm's trademark may be gracing smartphones in the near future. If you head over to palm.com, you will be redirected to a new site, mynewpalm.com, which carries the slogan "smart move." According to documents unearthed by the Palm diehards at WebOS Nation, HP sold the Palm trademark to a shell company owned by Nicolas Zibell last month. Zibell also happens to hold the title of President, Americas and Pacific at Alcatel One Touch, the mobile phone maker. Alcatel's slogan is "smart move."

This could be the first signal that Palm may not be out of the smartphone game for much longer. If new Palm phones are made, it's doubtful they will run WebOS, which HP sold to LG last year. That means new Palm devices will likely be running Android, a fact that may upset the few remaining WebOS fans. While Alcatel — owned by Chinese electronics giant TCL — has sold more than 300 million handsets, it doesn't have a notable footprint in the US outside of feature phones and low-end Android devices. The Palm trademark could help change that. Palm still has strong brand recognition in the US and Europe, something which Alcatel — hasn't been able to achieve on its own.