Solar panel manufacturer Solaria filed suit against Canadian Solar late last month over alleged patent infringement – and now the latter has had its say.
USA-based Solaria is the new kid on the block in Australia for solar panels, but it’s been manufacturing modules for the U.S. market since 2006.
On March 31, the company filed a suit in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California claiming Canadian Solar is infringing Solaria’s U.S. patent covering a process for separating photovoltaic strips from solar cells for use in tiled (aka “shingled”) solar modules. Shingled solar modules are those where the solar cell’s borders slightly overlap each other.
“Solaria has invested over $200 million in developing its technology over the last decade to create the most advanced solar panels in the world,” said Solaria CEO Suvi Sharma. “When foreign companies such as Canadian Solar ignore American patents and violate our core IP, we will take action to enforce and protect the technology that took so much effort and investment to develop.”
It’s always good to see a CEO not missing an opportunity to promote. It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that not all of Solaria’s solar panels are manufactured in the USA. Those for the residential market are made in South Korea. As for Canadian Solar, it’s headquartered in Canada, but much of its manufacturing occurs in China. It operates as a subsidiary of China’s Shenzhen Energy Group Co., Ltd.,
Solaria has indicated it could bring additional patent infringement and trade secret related claims.
Canadian Solar Breaks Its Silence
A couple of weeks have passed since the filing and Canadian Solar had nothing to say on the issue until yesterday – and its response was pretty standard for these sorts of situations; part of which states:
“Canadian Solar believes that the claims in Solaria’s complaint are meritless and unfounded. Canadian Solar is working closely with its legal counsel and will vigorously defend against the claims made by Solaria.”
My Patent Is Bigger Than Yours
Canadian Solar says it has 95 patents in various countries for its shingled-cell designs and inventions, with another 75 applications pending review. It says it has an additional 1,519 patents for its solar and energy storage innovation.
This will be somewhat of a David vs. Goliath battle, with Canadian Solar one of the world’s solar panel manufacturing heavyweights. What remains to be seen is which party is in the right and that will take some time (and money) to sort out.
Other Current Solar Patent Skirmishes
Lawyers have done pretty well out of the solar industry over the years and patent complaints are by no means uncommon – another recent one we mentioned is that between Hanwha Q-Cells and REC, Longi and JinkoSolar. QCells claimed the three were unlawfully importing and selling products infringing on its solar cell passivation patents. That battle spilled over from the USA into Germany and Australia.
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