<center><span class="news-text_italic-underline">Acer Inc and another v Nokia Technologies OY [2026] EWCA Civ 604</span> — Court of Appeal (Peter Jackson, Arnold and Zacaroli LJJ), 18 May 2026</center>
This judgment followed the Court of Appeal’s earlier main judgment ([2026] EWCA Civ 564), in which the Court dismissed Nokia’s jurisdiction appeal but allowed its appeal concerning the case management stay. That earlier decision left unresolved whether a particular disputed term ought to be included in Nokia’s adjustable licence offers.
The disputed term permitted either party to contend that any arbitration should encompass fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory “<span class="news-text_medium">(F)RAND</span>” cross-licence terms for patents owned, controlled or managed by the other party and required the other party to stay, withdraw or abandon related litigation. The claimants, Acer and ASUS, expressed concern that this provision could prevent them from enforcing their own standard-essential patents (“<span class="news-text_medium">SEPs</span>”) relating to mobile telephony standards. The claimants indicated that they would accept Nokia’s adjustable licence offers provided Nokia excised the disputed term. Nokia declined to do so.
Arnold LJ rejected Nokia’s submission that the question of whether the licence should be unilateral or reciprocal was a matter to be determined by the arbitrators. Nokia had itself argued and the Court of Appeal had accepted in the main judgment, that the Court was entitled to make a summary determination that the adjustable licence offers were RAND. It followed, Arnold LJ reasoned, that the Court was equally competent to determine whether the disputed term was RAND.
The Court held that the disputed term was plainly not on RAND terms, for two distinct reasons. First, applying Nokia’s own argument as accepted in the main judgment, a SEP owner is entitled to elect between arbitration and court proceedings when seeking a determination of (F)RAND terms. In respect of SEPs held by the claimants, that election rested with the claimants, not Nokia.
Second, Nokia’s RAND obligation could not properly be made conditional upon an implementer’s willingness to arbitrate a cross-licensing dispute concerning SEPs in an entirely different technology area, declared essential to different standards, by a different standards development organisation, operating under a different intellectual property rights policy and governed by a different system of law. The Court refused Nokia’s application for RAND declarations and directed that the conditions for the stay be set out in the Court’s order, rather than incorporated into the adjustable licences themselves.
This decision reinforces that a SEP holder’s RAND commitments cannot be used as a vehicle to compel implementers into arbitration over cross-licensing terms that fall outside the scope of the relevant standard, standards body and governing intellectual property rights policy. Implementers retain the right to elect their preferred forum for resolving disputes concerning their own SEP portfolios. Practitioners advising on SEP licensing negotiations should note the court’s readiness to scrutinise and excise individual licence terms that do not independently satisfy the RAND standard.
