Chinese solar manufacturer Runergy has petitioned the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to cancel two patent infringement complaints filed by its competitor Trina Solar relating to solar cells imported and sold by Runergy and Indian firm Adani Green Energy.
Trina filed the patent infringement claims with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) last week. They relate to the tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells used in Runergy and Adani’s products sold in the US and the manufacturing processes for those cells.
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PV Tech heard that patent holders often favour launching appeals with the ITC when dealing with defendants based outside the US as it tends to more faster than federal courts.
In a statement, Runergy claimed that: “The two challenged patents did not result from Trina Solar’s own work but were only purchased by Trina Solar from others in February 2024” and are therefore “unpatentable”.
It continued: “As early as 2013, [the German research institute] Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy had already published and described the making of TOPCon solar cells, following teachings published even earlier in the 1980s. The two Trina Solar acquired patents were not filed until more than a year after the Fraunhofer Institute 2013 publication.”
Runergy said that the patents that Trina Solar allegedly purchased after 2013 contained “only obvious variations already known in the prior art [of manufacturing cells].
“Runergy has invested heavily in innovation, research, and development,” the company continued. “Through this extensive research, Runergy has developed its own unique TOPCon solar cell manufacturing process; one that does not practice the patents that Trina Solar is asserting in the ITC and District Court actions.”
TOPCon patent spats
Both Trina Solar and Runergy are in the process of establishing US solar manufacturing capacity, and this challenge is the latest in a spate of TOPCon patent infringement cases, which have peppered the solar industry since the technology emerged into the mainstream of GW-scale manufacturing.
In August, JA Solar filed a TOPCon technology patent case with the Unified Patent Court (UPC) against an undisclosed competitor. The UPC is a supranational court covering 18 EU member states.
Singapore-headquartered solar manufacturer Maxeon has also filed a number of TOPCon patents in the US, most recently against Qcells, Canadian Solar and REC Solar. Maxeon’s CEO, Bill Mulligan, spoke to PV Tech Premium earlier this year where he claimed that SunPower, the company from which Maxeon spun out, was “the first to invent” TOPCon technology.
Last month, the Nasdaq stock exchange moved to delist Maxeon following consistently low stock prices.
