In August 2007, just after former Apple exec Jon Rubinstein joined Palm, Apple CEO Steve Jobs warned Palm CEO Ed Colligan against poaching his company’s employees. “We must do whatever we can to stop this,” he said, according to communications reviewed by Bloomberg. Colligan declined. “Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” he told the Apple CEO, noting–ironically–that Cupertino had hired away some two percent of Palm’s workforce as it began developing the iPhone.

And that’s proven a wise move. Today, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating just such gentleman’s agreements as a collusive restraint on trade. And Palm (PALM) and Apple (AAPL) are sparring over intellectual property and the Pre handset, which Apple claims “falsely pretends to be an iPod.” How convenient for Palm that these communications should emerge now when its Cupertino rival is giving it such a hard time. And such a distraction for Apple legal….

Of course, Jobs was right to worry. Within a year of his warning to Colligan, Palm hired away Mike Bell and Lynn Fox, Apple VP of CPU software in the Macintosh hardware division and head of Mac PR respectively, among others hired later. And within two years, Palm debuted a new handset that some consider a worthy rival to the Apple iPhone.

Jeff Zwerner, who did stints at Apple as both senior art director and creative director for packaging, has signed on at Palm (PALM) as senior vice president of brand design.

Zwerner joins Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein, formerly Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering; Senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell, former SVP of product development at Apple (AAPL); VP of Public Relations Lynn Fox, who once headed up Mac PR for the Cupertino, Calif., company; and board member Fred Anderson, who served as Apple’s CFO from 1996 to 2004.

Quite a collection. And it doesn’t include rank-and-file employees who’ve train-hopped from Cupertino to Sunnyvale. Seems Palm’s makeover isn’t so much a reinvention as a reimagining of the company as a sort of paint-by-numbers version of Apple.

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

– In 2006, Palm CEO Ed Colligan utters the words he’s been choking on since the debut of Apple’s iPhone

For Palm (PALM), which lost two-thirds of its market value in 2008, today may well be a watershed event–the point at which its long downward trajectory was suddenly reversed, buoyed up by a new operating system too long in coming. At a Consumer Electronics Show event later this morning, the company is expected to uncrate its Nova OS and a line of Nova-powered offerings with which it hopes to reinvigorate the Palm franchise.

Hope, of course, is the operative word here. Because while insiders describe Nova with superlatives typically reserved for the likes of Apple (”We’re onto something huge,” Palm engineer Mike Bell recently told BusinessWeek. “Some of the stuff we’re working on here is mind-blowing.”), Palm’s platform and its business remain very much a show-me story–or rather a you-can-show-me-but-I-probably-won’t-believe-you story. Consider this late December research note from Needham analyst Mark May:

Although the new platform is unlikely to challenge any of the competing smartphone platforms, the credentials of Palm’s engineering team lend a modicum of credibility to this possibility…. Palm is on the verge of oblivion. While the company has traded water the past three years, new competitors, such as Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), have entered the market while others, such as Research In Motion (RIMM), have gotten much stronger.

Clearly, May isn’t buying Palm’s “we’re onto something huge” claims. That said, there’s no reason to dismiss them–just yet, anyway.