A German court has banned Acer and ASUS from selling laptops and desktop PCs in the country following a patent dispute with Nokia. On January 22, the Munich I Regional Court ruled in favor of Nokia, prompting both companies to pull affected products from their German online stores. The injunction stems from Nokia’s standard-essential patents for H.265 (HEVC) video coding, with the court determining that Acer and ASUS had not complied with FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations.
According to a report by Videocardz.com, Nokia asserts that multiple patents related to HEVC, such as EP 2 375 749, have been filed in Germany and with the Unified Patent Court as part of an extensive licensing initiative. In early January 2026, Hisense secured a license from Nokia to bypass comparable restrictions. This decision impacts direct sales channels, as product pages and purchasing options are presently inaccessible on the manufacturers' German websites.
The conflict revolves around Nokia's claims concerning standard-essential patents related to video coding. Reports on the case highlight several HEVC-related patents being asserted in Germany and the Unified Patent Court, including EP 2 375 749 and other patents from the HEVC portfolio mentioned in concurrent actions. The Munich decision against Acer and ASUS is largely characterized as an injunction due to findings of infringement and the court's perspective on licensing behavior.
The Munich court determined that Acer and ASUS were not behaving as willing licensees under its FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing) guidelines, which allowed for injunctive relief. In contrast, Hisense secured a license in early January 2026, thereby minimizing its risk in the broader Nokia initiative.
Nokia possesses a substantial collection of video technology patents. These primarily encompass standard-essential patents related to widely-used video codecs such as H.264, H.265 (HEVC), and H.266 (VVC). Additionally, they include patents concerning the broader video pipeline, covering aspects like hardware and software implementation of encoding and decoding, streaming and delivery enhancements (including CDN technologies), adaptive bitrate playback, error resilience, video processing, and real-time video functionalities utilized by applications and services.
