Acer and Asus shut down support for PC and laptops in wake of patent dispute ruling, drivers and updates inaccessible to existing customers — German website finds a workaround

It's not a fun time to be a computing enthusiast in Germany. Besides the high RAM and SSD prices everyone else is experiencing, both Asus and Acer's German websites are completely down due to the companies' recent spat with Nokia over the HEVC codec — meaning customers can't find any downloads or reach support pages for their hardware. (For example, obtaining BIOS updates and drivers.) Computerbase.de first reported the news.

It's not just the German websites that are offline; any German user trying to work around the issue by visiting the US version of the websites will also be redirected to a page stating the sites are unreachable. Trying to use a VPN and setting (for example) a U.S. location to reach the German sites doesn't work either. Their only recourse is to use a VPN endpoint outside Germany and visit the non-German websites to find downloads for their wares.

The origin of this issue is the recent lawsuit from Nokia against both companies over royalties for the HEVC codec. Nokia managed to get a German court to issue an injunction against both makers, blocking them from "offering, placing on the market, using, or importing or possessing such devices in Germany." It's worth noting that Germany is the largest consumer computing market in Europe.

In a public statement, Asus said that "all after-sales services in Germany remain fully operational, and existing customers will continue to receive uninterrupted support in full compliance with the current court order," adding that it is "evaluating and pursuing further legal action to reach a fair resolution as soon as possible".

The fact that the websites are completely down runs counter to this statement. There's no telling if email support has also been taken offline, but you couldn't even find that to begin with. The fact that — at least for Asus — the blocking also affects German users visiting the U.S. website also seems excessive.

While it's hard to pin down the exact rationale for a complete geo-block of both German websites and German users, it's simply due to unintended consequences. In theory, all the companies would have to do would be to ensure that their respective German online stores are disabled, and that any other regions' stores no longer ship to Germany, but the block is much broader.

It's also not impossible that the injunction's wording could be overly broad, and the companies are playing on the safe side. In the past, Oppo/OnePlus, Vivo, and Lenovo went through similar situations, but reports indicate that their respective websites weren't completely taken offline.

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