Acer and ASUS restart shipments of HEVC PCs in Germany
Acer and ASUS are shipping affected notebooks and desktop PCs in Germany again, following months of restrictions linked to a Nokia video coding patent dispute.
The issue started earlier this year after the Munich I Regional Court issued an injunction against Acer on January 22, 2026. ASUS was affected by a similar restriction. The ruling covered devices using HEVC, also known as H.265, and blocked the companies from offering, distributing, importing, or holding affected products for sale in Germany.
HEVC models are shipping again
According to ChannelPartner, Acer confirmed at its partner conference in Hamburg that the affected products are being shipped again. The company did not share the terms of the agreement, but said it will ship products both with and without a preinstalled HEVC codec.
Acer will ship products both with and without the HEVC codec. For products without a pre-installed HEVC codec, customers can activate support by installing the necessary software separately via official third-party channels,
— Acer PR (translation)
For systems without HEVC preinstalled, Acer says customers can activate support by installing the required software separately through official third-party channels. This is similar to the approach already used by some PC vendors, where HEVC support is no longer bundled with every Windows system.
ASUS has provided more details. The company says it has entered into an arbitration agreement with Nokia to settle the patent disputes. As part of this process, ongoing legal proceedings between ASUS and Nokia, including those in Germany, will be suspended or withdrawn.
Asus and Nokia have entered into an arbitration agreement to settle their patent disputes. In this context, the ongoing legal proceedings between the two companies, including those in Germany, will be suspended or withdrawn
— ASUS PR (translation)
This follows several months of disruption for both vendors in Germany. We previously reported that Acer and ASUS had to stop direct sales of selected PCs and notebooks in the country, while ASUS also temporarily suspended its German online store. Existing retail stock could still be sold, but new shipments were affected until a legal or licensing path was found. That happened in February, so it took four months to find a solution.
Source: Channel Partner
