A German court has ordered Acer and ASUS to pause direct sales of laptops and desktop PCs in the country. This comes after a patent infringement ruling went in favour of Nokia. On January 22, the Munich I Regional Court announced its decision, which has already forced both vendors to remove products from their German online shopfronts. Nokia’s standard-essential patent claims related to H. 265 video coding (HEVC) are the basis for the injunction. Nokia secured injunctive relief after the court found that Acer and ASUS had not acted as willing licensees in accordance with the FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) requirements.
Nokia claims that several HEVC-related patents, including EP 2 375 749, were filed in Germany and with the Unified Patent Court as part of a broader licensing campaign, according to a report by Videocardz.com.
Early in January 2026, Hisense obtained a licence from Nokia to circumvent similar limitations. The ruling affects direct sales channels, as product pages and purchase options are currently unavailable on the manufacturers’ German websites.
What are Nokia’s H.265 patents, and what company said about the court ruling
Nokia holds a substantial portfolio of video technology patents. This includes standard-essential patents tied to common video codecs like H.264, H.265 (HEVC), and H.266 (VVC), plus other patents around the wider video pipeline, including how encoding and decoding is implemented in hardware and software, streaming and delivery optimisations (including CDN-related tech), adaptive bitrate playback, error resilience, video processing, and realtime video features used by apps and services.
Nokia said in a statement.
Next steps depend on appeals and licensing. Acer and Asus have suggested that they plan to challenge the decision, and a negotiated licence remains a direct route to restoring normal sales.
How German customers can now buy Acer and Asus PCs and laptops
The injunctions target Acer and Asus as manufacturers, not retailers, meaning products will not disappear from German shelves immediately. Retailers are free to keep selling their current stock, but while enforcement and appeals are ongoing, regular OEM channel replenishment may be interrupted.
Retailers like Amazon, MediaMarkt, or Saturn may still carry certain Acer or ASUS models, but if direct shipments are suspended, the selection may become more limited.
Existing owners will not be affected by the ruling and can continue using their devices. The dispute concerns sales and distribution, not a product recall. Acer told PC Welt while commenting on the German court ruling.
