Direct Asus and Acer gaming PC sales blocked in Germany due to lawsuit from Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia

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Auf wiedersehen.

A large blue Nokia logo is mounted on the white facade of the Nokia corporate office building in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, on January 7, 2026.
(Image credit: Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

German PC gamers might struggle to pick up Acer or Asus gaming laptops and desktops for the foreseeable future, as a court ruling out of Munich has put a pause on direct sales. This is the latest development in a patent suit filed by Nokia against the two companies, as well as Chinese electronics company Hisense last year.

The lawsuit alleges that Acer and Asus’ PCs plus Hisense’s smart TVs infringe upon three of Nokia's patents relating to the H.265 (HEVC) video codec standard (via Juve Patent). HiSense sought to settle in January and, following a license agreement, Nokia has since withdrawn its lawsuit against the company. Acer and Asus are still fighting it out in the courts.

Four Asus X870 and X870E motherboards

(Image credit: Asus)

Aside from patent proceedings, Nokia has most recently earned headlines with 4G projects that shoot for the moon—literally.

On the other side of the suit, Asus has most recently been in the news for announcing an 'immediate internal review' of its 800-series motherboards following 'recent reports concerning Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs.' To elaborate on the company's vaguely worded statement on the issue, some PC gamers allege that popping a Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU into an AM5 socket motherboard has caused a whole host of issues, up to and including the death of the CPU itself.

Perhaps hitting the pause button on planned Asus purchases is not the worst thing a consumer could do right now.

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Jess Kinghorn
Jess Kinghorn
Hardware Writer

Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense.

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