Pendulum swings in Nokia’s favor in Brazilian ASUS preliminary injunction case 

Context:

• Nokia began enforcing several of its multimedia patents (many of which are standard-essential patents (SEPs)) against ASUS in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and Germany (April 1, 2025 ip fray article). It then expanded its campaign to Brazil, the United States International Trade Commission (USITC or ITC) (April 11, 2025 ip fray article), and India (June 26, 2025 ip fray article).
• As part of its case in Brazil, Nokia filed a merits-based preliminary injunction (PI) request against ASUS in the 3rd Business Court of the Capital District, Rio de Janeiro, in October 2025. The court granted Nokia a partial injunction a month later, exempting Nokia from paying a security deposit because it is headquartered in Finland, a signatory country to the Hague Convention on International Access to Justice (November 11, 2025 Rio de Janeiro court decision).

What’s new: Nokia has received a favorable expert report in its Brazilian merits-based PI case, stating that the patent-in-suit (BR0211263 (“Interpolation method in video encoding, video encoder for encoding an image and communications terminal”)) is “essential” for the functioning of the H.264/AVC standard and, is “necessarily infringed” by ASUS devices (the full 93-page report, which is now public, is below the box). The report, which contains 195 questions, was produced by a court-appointed group of experts named La Rocca. 

Direct impact: This expert report will likely result in a PI, which will be very difficult for ASUS to get lifted. The case is moving at a very fast pace for Brazil, given that the action was filed in October and an adversarial hearing will be held over the expert report on March 24, 2026. The expert will then have until April 10 to furnish a supplementary report, before a decision on the injunction is issued on April 29.

Wider ramifications: Given that this PI is merits-based (i.e., based on a court-appointed expert’s report) as opposed to merely urgency-based, ASUS is now facing a clear and present danger of actual enforcement. Merits-based PIs tend to take around six months (so this case is quite fast) and, when issued, are much harder to get lifted. The first of this kind became known in February 2025 in a case between DivX and Hisense (February 11, 2025 ip fray article), while others were issued in InterDigital v. Disney (September 11, 2025 ip fray article) and NEC v. HMD (February 9, 2026 ip fray article).