Asus and Nokia end litigation with patent licence

The Taiwanese manufacturer Asus and Finnish company Nokia concluded a licence agreement on Monday. The deal mirrors the structure of the Acer arrangement: the parties have entered into a licence agreement that includes an arbitration clause, meaning the terms will be determined through arbitration. The pending German and UPC proceedings between the two companies are now being brought to an end through withdrawal of the respective actions.

Nokia had launched a global litigation campaign against Asus, Acer and Hisense in April 2025, targeting products including Asus laptops and smartphones, Acer gaming laptops and Hisense smart TVs. The Finnish company filed actions at the UPC, Munich Regional Court, the ITC and federal courts in the US, as well as in India and Brazil.

In January 2026, Munich Regional Court granted injunctions against Asus and Acer based on EP 2 774 375, a patent essential to the H.265 video coding standard. The same court issued two further injunctions against the two manufacturers in March.

Royalty base as sticking point

A decision by the UK Court of Appeal in May had already shifted the balance in Nokia’s favour, when it ruled that Nokia had complied with its RAND obligations by offering Asus and Acer so-called adjustable licences, under which the financial terms would be set by binding arbitration — a model the current settlements mirror. This led to the permanent stay of the UK proceedings and the cancellation of the RAND trial scheduled for summer 2025.

While the financial terms of the Asus-Nokia agreement remain confidential, the core dispute had centred on the royalty base: Nokia reportedly sought to calculate the licence rate based on the full device price, while Asus and Acer argued the rate should apply only to the price of the relevant CPUs and GPUs that integrate H.265 decoding circuitry, with Nokia having previously secured higher licence fees for the same patent against Amazon in 2025.

Return to the German market

Following the settlement, Asus and Acer are resuming sales of desktop PCs and notebooks in Germany after a four-month sales halt resulting from the Munich injunctions. The injunctions had also affected mini-PCs such as Asus’s NUC series. New notebook models and complete PCs from both manufacturers are now reappearing on German price comparison platforms, with deliveries of some configurations of the Asus NUC 16 Pro scheduled to begin in July.

According to a statement from Asus, the companies “have entered into an arbitration agreement to resolve their patent disputes. In this context, the ongoing legal proceedings between the two companies, including those in Germany, will be suspended or withdrawn.”

Asus representative Alexander Wiese, partner at German IP boutique Wildanger, confirmed to JUVE Patent that the deal puts an end to litigation in Germany and at the UPC. Asus’ German patent attorney in court was Tilman Taruttis from Düsseldorf firm Keenway.

Nokia relied on a cross-border team from Bird & Bird. Düsseldorf partner Christian Harmsen led the German and UPC proceedings while London-based partner Richard Vary represented Nokia in the UK SEP proceedings. A Nokia team comprising head of global litigation and disputes Clemens Heusch and nhead of litigation programme management Armin Schwitulla handled the lawsuits internally.

Patent attorneys Christoph Walke and Lars Grannemann of Cohausz & Florack advised on technical matters in both cases.

A season of settlements

Hisense had already settled with Nokia in January 2026. With the Acer agreement concluded this month and the Asus deal now in place, Nokia has reached settlements with all three defendants from its April 2025 campaign.

This month Nokia also signed a multi-year, multi-technology patent cross-licence with Lenovo, succeeding a previous agreement from 2021.