BREAKING: Nokia, Acer sign patent licensing agreement, will determine terms through arbitration

Context: Nokia launched a video patent enforcement campaign against Acer, ASUS, and Hisense in April 2025, suing in the Unified Patent Court (UPC), Germany, the U.S. (April 11, 2025 ip fray article), Brazil, and India (June 13, 2025 ip fray article). Acer then retaliated with a UK FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) complaint (June 12, 2025 LinkedIn post by ip fray). However, in January (January 23, 2026 ip fray article) and March (March 26, 2026 ip fray article) this year, the Munich I Regional Court entered injunctions against Acer and ASUS over two of the patents-in-suit. And, in another major win for Nokia, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales (EWCA) permanently stayed Acer and ASUS’s UK actions, after finding that Nokia had complied with its RAND obligations by offering Acer and Asus adjustable licenses (May 12, 2026 ip fray article).

What’s new: Nokia and Acer have signed a patent license agreement covering the use of Nokia’s video coding technologies in Acer’s devices, Nokia’s Chief Licensing Officer, Susanna Martikainen, today revealed. The two companies have further agreed to enter into binding arbitration to determine certain terms of the agreement, she added.

Direct impact: The deal means that any related patent litigations between the two companies will be paused or withdrawn, Ms. Martikainen also said today. With the sole UPC case already withdrawn, and the cases in the UK permanently stayed, this applies to the cases in Brazil, Germany, the U.S., and India.

Wider ramifications:

• This is really positive for Nokia, which only yesterday announced it signed another multi-year, multi-technology patent cross-license agreement with Lenovo (June 18, 2026 ip fray article). That deal replaced another already in place from 2021, which had settled a long-running global dispute between the parties.
• This also means two of the three parties it initially targeted have now signed licensing agreements, with Hisense settling its prong of the dispute in January (January 8, 2026 ip fray article). The company’s case over similar technologies against ASUS remains pending. However, ASUS suffered a recent loss in the UK, and its conduct in the U.S. is also under scrutiny by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director John A. Squires, after a petition for review by Nokia against a petition by ASUS for an inter partes review was thrown out (May 28, 2026 ip fray article). Mr. Squires noted that ASUS may have violated a Sotera stipulation, which is the next best thing to a safe harbor when requesting a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) IPR.