Today, Apple held their quarterly conference call to report earnings to the shareholders. They reported that they saw $1.21 billion in profit, which is up $160 million from this time last year. Not bad, I guess. I mean, it’s the best 2nd quarter Apple has ever had, but the interesting part of the conference call for me was the Q&A towards the end. Specifically, the question about netbooks.

The Palm Pre has yet to be released, and there is already tons of talk about Apple, Palm, intellectual property (IP), and all the other goodies that come along with introducing new products that could be considered similar to others. You probably remember Tim Cook’s statement earlier this week on their conference call about their IP and competition (or shall I say, about the Pre, specifically). On top of that news, there are a couple comments from Palm spokeswoman Lynn Fox to take into consideration.

Apple had their official conference call with Wall Street this week that detailed their earnings for this most recent quarter, as well as some other interesting news and questions. One of the more interesting questions was about the Palm Pre and its relation to Apple’s iPhone and its patents. RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky mentioned that the “… Palm Pre almost directly emulates what you have already patented.” With that, Tim Cook fired back, “We like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our IP.”