Acer and Asus halt PC and laptop sales in Germany amid H.264 codec patent dispute — Nokia wins patent ruling, forcing tech giants to license HEVC codec

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Image credit: Future

Acer and Asus have temporarily stopped selling desktop and laptop PCs in Germany after a German court granted Nokia an injunction prohibiting the sale of their products. According to HardwareLuxx (machine translated), the two manufacturers are prohibited from “offering, placing on the market, using, or importing or possessing such devices in Germany.”

HEVC patent dispute

The High‑Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC or H.265) video compression standard is at the heart of this case. Nokia alleges that Acer, Asus, and TV manufacturer Hisense infringe three patents related to the standard. Hisense purchased a license from Nokia in January, but Acer and Asus continue to contest the allegations in court.

HEVC is considered a standard‑essential patent (SEP) because of its widespread use. The technology is supported by almost all integrated GPUs, discrete GPUs, and SoCs and is essential to many operating systems, streaming applications, video‑conferencing services, and other software. While alternatives such as AV1 exist, the lack of HEVC support on PCs would significantly degrade user experience, making it effectively a requirement for computer manufacturers.

Previously, OEMs relied on suppliers to cover licensing requirements for specific technologies. In this case, both Acer and Asus appear to have encountered issues with their HEVC implementation, prompting the suspension of sales for all affected products. Because HEVC has SEP status, Nokia must license it on FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non‑Discriminatory) terms. Although the two companies state that they respect intellectual property, Germany’s stricter interpretation of FRAND regulations has led to the determination that both infringe Nokia’s patents.