> There may be patent-infringing H265 decoding hardware inside the GPU, but Acer and Asus would have purchased GPUs as a standard component.

It doesn't generally work like that, at least for codec patent pools. The royalty trigger is typically tied to the sale of a "consumer HEVC product" to an end user, and the "licensee" is generally the entity that sells the finished, branded product (e.g., the PC OEM), even if the silicon came from someone else. (I have a patent related to deferring royalty triggers for technologies like HEVC until they're needed: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11930011B2/)

As I understand it, this is a pretty common legal problem that shows up when multiple parties collaborate to make something. And the result turns out to be legally problematic in some way. Its often incredibly difficult for the plaintiff to figure out who's really legally responsible - especially since they don't have access to all the supplier contracts that were signed. And all the suppliers will probably blame each other in court.

Looking at this case, if we assume there is infringing software / hardware inside these laptops, then figuring out which supplier is to blame is Acer/asus's problem. Its not up to nokia to go through all the contracts.

Its kinda like in software. If I install your software and it crashes, don't blame your 3rd party libraries. I don't care why it crashes. Figure it out and fix it.

Philosophically, I completely agree with you about software patents. I don't even mind these legal battles because they push companies toward the patent-free AV1 codec.

It doesn't matter where codecs come into the picture. If they're selling something which infringes the patent, they're selling something which infringes that patent. It doesn't matter if they bought the part that actually does the infringing bit from someone else.