Qualcomm bought some BenQ Mobile (ex-Siemens) patents from HP (Palm), but according to Jobs, these were rather worthless:

Just for the record, when Siemens sold their handset business to BenQ they didn’t sell them their essential patents but rather just gave them a license. The patents they did sell to BenQ are not that great. We looked at them ourselves when they were for sale. I guess you guys felt differently and bought them. We are not concerned about them at all. [1]

Maybe this is what you were thinking about? If there is more, I’d be glad to hear about it!

[1] http://www.project-disco.org/competition/012313-patent-bully...