In September 2022, JinkoSolar acquired a batch of PV patents from LG Group, and since then it has transferred nearly half of them to two "friends", Trina Solar and JA Solar. The three companies are known as the "Jingjingtian" alliance because of their basic technical routes, and now, several of them have become weapons for them to launch a "patent war".

The PV "patent war" that began in May 2024 has evolved into a "chaotic lawsuit", with the initial defendants quickly turning back from their own patent pools with "usable things", involving more and more companies.

On February 13, a dispute over "infringement of invention patent rights" was heard in the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court.

One of the defendants, a one-person company with a registered capital of 500,000 yuan and a registered address in a low-cost hotel, is hard to imagine that it can be a distributor of photovoltaic giant LONGi Green Energy alongside it, and the plaintiff is a subsidiary of JinkoSolar.

The lawsuit is the first case to be heard this year in this "patent war", and it is essentially a "showdown" between TOPCon leader JinkoSolar and LONGi Green Energy, which adheres to another technical route.

The latter regards TOPCon as a transitional product, and widely claims that the BC route it chooses is the king of the future, while "Jingjingtian" claims that it is the actual controller of the mainstream photovoltaic technology at present and in the next five years. (For details, see the previous article of Titanium Media APP: "LONGi Green Energy Gambles on BC This Year: The Technical Battle of False Propositions and the Marketing War That No Longer Hides"

For LONGi Green Energy, it is currently facing a double blow of losses of 8.9 billion yuan in the past year and TOPCon is still the mainstream of the market. At this time, the intensive patent litigation that came up from the "siege" is bound to make its transformation into BC more and more tragic.

The industry is at a low point, cold and cruel.

Patent game, "war" escalation

In this photovoltaic patent game war in which more and more giants are involved, the "Jingjingtian" alliance is obviously on the offensive, not only occupying the position of the plaintiff in almost all infringement lawsuits, but also showing more and more ruthless and accurate design.

In May 2024, Trina Solar filed an application for detention at Shanghai Yangshan Customs, requesting the detention of nine containers of some types of photovoltaic module products exported to Europe on the grounds that Changshu Canadian Solar Technology Co., Ltd. ("Changshu Canadian Solar") products were suspected of infringing patent rights.

In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Regulations on the Customs Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, if the owner of intellectual property rights discovers that the suspected infringing goods are about to be imported or exported, he may apply to the Customs for the detention of the suspected infringing goods. However, the customs is not responsible for judging whether infringement is constituted, and will immediately release the goods if the other party submits an application for release and pays an equivalent deposit.

The situation was as follows: on July 9, Canadian Solar received a detention decision from the customs, and the goods were detained; On July 12, the Customs issued a Notice of Release of Detention (Sealing) to release the relevant goods.

Although the goods went to sea, the patent infringement matters left behind were not resolved, which was equivalent to a lit fuse at that time, and evolved into Trina Solar's patent infringement lawsuit of more than one billion yuan against Canadian Solar after the Spring Festival in the Year of the Snake.

On

July 19, 2024, JA Solar (002459. SZ) filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Chint New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. and several of its European subsidiaries in the European Patent Court, not only disclosing the specific patent number of the TOPCon battery technology, but also explicitly targeting the European market.

Compared with these two, JinkoSolar (688223. SH) started late, but after the "start of fighting", it showed many highlights such as the fastest progress, the most litigation, the widest range of regions, and the strongest opponent.

In just over two months from December 2024 to the present, JinkoSolar has filed six lawsuits against LONGi Green Energy, from Jiangsu and Jiangxi to Japan and Australia, and LONGi has also filed "counteroffensive" patent infringement lawsuits against JinkoSolar in the United States and Jinan, Shandong Province.

At the beginning of December 2024, JinkoSolar launched three lawsuits against LONGi Green Energy and its distributors in Jiangsu, one of which showed that the other subsidiaries were the plaintiffs, and the case was either closed or withdrawn.

The lawsuit initiated by Jiangsu was an ordinary civil lawsuit, and the lawsuit that was heard in Jiangxi more than a month later was a "dispute over infringement of invention patents" heard by a professional intellectual property court. What may seem like a casual change is actually significant.

Compared with civil litigation, the burden of proof in invention patent infringement cases is reversed, that is, the plaintiff only needs to provide the same or similar goods made by the defendant using a certain method and the plaintiff's patented process, and the defendant bears the burden of proving that the production method of its goods is different from the plaintiff's patented process.

In addition, if the defendant requests the invalidation of the patent right within the defense period, the people's court may not suspend the litigation if the defendant requests that the patent right be invalidated during the trial of a dispute over infringement of invention patent.

It is not difficult to see that the litigation has shifted from ordinary civil to invention disputes, and this change is more unfavorable to the defendant.

The "confrontation" between Trina Solar and Canadian Solar is also in a similar situation: according to Canadian Solar's announcement, after the customs detention incident, Changshu Canadian Solar submitted a request for invalidation of a patent to the National Patent Office in November 2024, and at the same time filed a lawsuit for non-infringement of patent rights with the court, the No. 1482 and No. 1483 cases are ordinary civil lawsuits, while Trina Solar's recent lawsuit against Canadian Solar is a "dispute over infringement of invention patents".

This means that Canadian Solar's earlier lawsuit will be joined, and even if its request for invalidation to the Patent Office is established, it will not be able to suspend the hearing of the Jiangsu High Court.

Obviously, "Jingjingtian" not only came prepared, but as the war raged, its attack became more and more ruthless.

Under the banner of innovation, "competitive alienation" is undercurrent

As for the motive of the huge patent lawsuit, in the communication with various manufacturers as an investor, "Jingjingtian" almost unanimously said that this move is to "protect intellectual property rights and promote innovation." ”

"From the perspective of the entire industry, everyone has begun to pay more and more attention to the protection of intellectual property rights than before, on the other hand, the country has been advocating innovation in recent years, and intellectual property protection is a very important point in the innovation process, because only by protecting intellectual property rights will everyone have the motivation to carry out technological innovation." JinkoSolar said.

"The protection of intellectual property rights is a major trend, and we have made many proposals over the years, including to the senior management: the protection of intellectual property rights is the primary prerequisite for promoting scientific and technological innovation," Trina Solar said, "The photovoltaic industry is moving from high-speed development to high-quality development, and strengthening intellectual property protection as the need for high-quality development has become an international and domestic consensus." ”

As for business, JinkoSolar said that "it is more from the perspective of protecting the rights and interests of R&D." ”

"We have spent a lot of R&D funds and efforts to obtain some innovative results, and naturally we hope that this results will bring benefits to the company. Others, if they want to share, can only get authorization by doing some collaboration with us. If we don't use our patented technology for our own use, without greeting or communicating, the developers will definitely come out to protect their own rights and interests. ”

However, it is slightly ironic that "Jingjingtian" is not the "developer" in this round of "patent war", but the "buyer". Although each company claims to be a leader in R&D investment and patent layout, the patents that were "protected" through litigation were purchased from LG Group.

In 2022, LG announced its complete withdrawal from the photovoltaic manufacturing industry, and at the same time decided to sell some of its photovoltaic patents, and the successor to this batch of about 700 patents was JinkoSolar's "Shangrao Jinko Green Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd.", which was later renamed "Shangrao Xinyuan Yuedong Technology Development Co., Ltd."

example diagram

About two years later, JinkoSolar will have lost less than half of its shares.

Between March and April 2024, nearly 200 of these patents were successively transferred to Trina Solar. As soon as the transfer was completed, the "customs detention incident" occurred in May 2024, and Trina Solar's "difficulty" weapon was the patent that had just been purchased from a friendly businessman.

Screenshot of an example of the evolution of the legal status of patent assignments

Then, between May and June 2024, another 131 patents "arrived" to JA Solar. The latter also sued overseas to enforce "protection" in the month after it arrived (July 2024).

When JinkoSolar made a move, "Pioneer" was the main body of LG's patent at that time - "Shangrao Xinyuan More and More".

What's even more intriguing is that from 2019 to 2023, PV manufacturers such as JinkoSolar, Trina Solar, and LONGi Green Energy have been deeply involved in patent infringement lawsuits from Hanwha Group. A considerable portion of Hanwha's patents were also purchased from LG.

These patent lawsuits in more than 10 countries around the world have been "seesawing" for many years, during which Trina Solar, Jinko, LONGi, etc. have sometimes lost their lawsuits and been banned, and the game methods used by them as defendants at that time included initiating patent invalidation proceedings, etc., and finally reached a "patent cross-licensing" settlement with Hanwha, all domestic giants cheered - "finally broke the siege of overseas capital." ”

However, "there is nothing new under the sun", overseas "containment" is only sung, and those who buy overseas patents immediately lay a new "siege", and in the name of "promoting scientific and technological innovation".

"Judging from the claims raised by the other party (JinkoSolar) in initiating these lawsuits, it can be understood that 'it is not a patent lawsuit, but more of a commercial competition'", LONGi Green Energy said frankly, "When the general industry is not good, there will be more such things, which also reflects a commercial competition phenomenon of various companies in the current photovoltaic industry bottom cycle stage." ”

LONGi BC Road, the snow is even worse

Recently, LONGi Green Energy also carried out "counterclaims" against Jinko in San Francisco and Jinan, China, when it was eating six lawsuits in a row.

According to the relevant provisions, a counterclaim refers to the act of the defendant in a lawsuit that has already been filed for an act that is connected with the original lawsuit, and the conditions that must be met include: it can only be filed with the court that accepts the lawsuit, the counterclaim and the lawsuit must be subject to the same litigation procedures, and the counterclaim and the claim of the lawsuit must be factually or legally implicated.

The above provisions, combined with the fact that LONGi does not ship TOPCon products in the United States, its choice of litigation against Jinko in the United States is obviously not a counterclaim in the legal sense as a countermeasure, but more like a case of "scraping" content for the purpose of countermeasures, and also reflects the helplessness of enterprises that have been coerced by the "patent war" under the intensification of "involution", which has to devote a lot of energy and resources to dealing with litigation.

For LONGi Green Energy, which has made a high-profile claim that "TOPCon is only a transition..... all domestic battery production capacity plans to switch to BC production capacity by the end of 2026", the current situation can be described as worse.

In recent years, while other new and old PV companies have expanded their production capacity of N-type TOPCon and "feasted" on the rapidly exploding TOPCon market, LONGi Green Energy has missed this "golden train". At present, in addition to announcing the construction of a 30GW "high-efficiency N-type TOPCon cell technology project" in Ordos in 2023, LONGi is making every effort to switch its production capacity to the direction of BC, which is more costly.

The price of such a wholehearted "advance bet" is the crown of the "2024 loss king": LONGi's latest performance forecast will deduct a non-net profit loss of 8.3 billion yuan to 8.9 billion yuan in 2024, and the loss is likely to become the largest among all listed companies.

Because of this, LONGi Green Energy cannot "leave behind" TOPCon on the road to BC. "In the latest quarter, our TOPCon shipments accounted for about one-third, after all, the market is still there, and when our own (TOPCon) production capacity is insufficient, we will also purchase (TOPCon) cells for modules." LONGi Green Energy said.

LONGi's realistic response is exactly where JinkoSolar, the leader of TOPCon, sees it and makes a patent snipe. "According to our calculations, LONGi's current shipments on TOPCon are still relatively large. The lawsuit is also only for pure TOPCon module and cell technology, and does not involve TOPCon-related (BC) stacks. JinkoSolar said.

Regarding the patent litigation involving TOPCon technology from all directions at home and abroad, LONGi Green Energy insisted that it would have little impact on the current production and sales. "First, it usually takes about two years for the patent lawsuit to come out, and at that time, according to the plan, our production capacity will mainly switch to the BC route."

Jinko doesn't think so: "Although they are talking about BC, everyone can see that their BC production capacity is actually only gradually landing, and there are still many TOPCon products in the early stage." ”

The latest data also shows that TOPCon products are still the absolute mainstream of the market.

Taking China Datang Group's 2024 PV centralized procurement scale and 2025 procurement plan as an example, Datang Group's PV module centralized procurement scale in 2024 will total 16GW, including 13GW of TOPCon modules, 1GW of heterojunction modules, 2GW of PERC modules, and no BC.

According to Datang's 2025-2026 PV module framework procurement bidding announcement, the total estimated purchase volume of the N-type TOPCon bid is 19.5GW, the estimated total purchase volume of the N-type heterojunction PV module bid is 2GW, and the total purchase volume of the N-type BC PV module bid is estimated to be 1GW.

Such a reality means that in the process of LONGi Green Energy's transformation into BC, it needs to "hold" TOPCon if it wants to maintain its performance, at least temporarily, and the "patent war" has become a sudden cloud.

"If it is finally confirmed that there is patent infringement, then there will definitely be a potential risk to the sale of the products involved. For example, some customers may be a little worried when they buy the defendant's product if there is a patent dispute in the future, and may be inclined to buy other products that are not in dispute. JinkoSolar said, "Of course, it also depends on the mentality of downstream customers." ”