21st Century Business Herald reporter Cao Enhui reported from Shanghai

On February 27, 2025, in a hotel in Suzhou, two photovoltaic powerhouses, LONGi Green Energy (601012. SH) and Canadian Solar (688472.SH) jointly organized an event called "China Photovoltaic Storage Original Technology Forum".

The word "original" is very eye-catching. Some participants said that this is some of the things that have happened in the industry in the "connotation" recently.

"Things" point to the "feuds" that have arisen in recent months because of patent disputes among several major domestic photovoltaic companies: JinkoSolar (688223. SH) sued LONGi Green Energy in China and Australia, and the latter also filed counterclaims in China and the United States; Canadian Solar became the defendant, and Trina Solar (688599. SH) claimed 1.058 billion yuan from it for two patents, which became the largest photovoltaic patent case in the history of A-shares.

Patent disputes are not uncommon in the PV industry. Back in the era of PERC (Back Contact Passivated Battery) technology (2019 to 2023), reports of patent infringement were common. The N-type technology represented by TOPCon (tunneling oxide passivation contact) will begin to dominate the market from 2024, and patent disputes seem to be intensifying.

According to incomplete statistics, seven of the top 10 manufacturers in the world in terms of PV module shipments have been involved in patent disputes. Among them, the vast majority of module manufacturers have the dual identity of both plaintiffs and defendants.

The 21st Century Business Herald reporter found in recent exchanges that the person in charge of a photovoltaic company lamented that patents have become a weapon of competition. However, there are also leaders of photovoltaic companies who firmly believe that protecting intellectual property rights is also a way to break the fierce competition.

In fact, in the eyes of the industry, every patent lawsuit is inseparable from the entanglement of commercial interests. The current patent battles that frequently break out in the industry may become an opportunity to build an intellectual property system in the photovoltaic industry.

The Evolution of Patent Disputes: From "Defendant" to "Mutual Litigation".

2024 is a turning point.

Prior to this, most of the Chinese PV companies were defendants in patent disputes, and they continued to face patent lawsuits initiated by foreign PV companies such as Hanwha Q-CELLS (hereinafter referred to as Hanwha) and Maxeon. But since last year, several Chinese PV companies have become defenders, launching lawsuits in major PV markets including China, the United States, and Germany, targeting both foreign and Chinese PV companies.

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in March 2019, Hanwha sued JinkoSolar, LONGi (note: it had not changed its name to LONGi Green Energy at that time) and REC for patent infringement of passivation technology, which brought back the attention of Hanwha, a South Korean photovoltaic company that had been quiet in the domestic market. This photovoltaic company, which belongs to the same era as China's old photovoltaic giants such as Wuxi Suntech, LDK and Yingli Energy, has become a "patent bandit" in the eyes of Chinese photovoltaic companies in the past few years. From 2019 to 2023, leading PV module companies such as LONGi Green Energy, JinkoSolar, and Trina Solar have not escaped Hanwha's lawsuit.

In

March 2019, Hanwha sued LONGi in the United States, claiming that the latter used its patented passivation technology to improve the efficiency and performance of solar cells, which was related to PERC technology, which had already dominated the PV industry at the time.

However, Hanwha's lawsuit against LONGi Green Energy is not limited to the United States, Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands are all Hanwha's patent battlegrounds, and they have won and lost each other. For example, in the Netherlands, the Hague Court of Appeal ruled in March 2022 that LONGi should not engage in direct and/or indirect infringement of Hanwha's European patents in 11 countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Austria, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, involving various types EP2220689 of module products such as Hi-M03. In June 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an appeal judgment in Hanwha's U.S. "Section 215" patent invalidation case, ruling that Hanwha's patent rights in question were invalid.

The patent dispute between LONGi Green Energy and Hanwha was finally settled in 2023 with the two parties reaching a patent cross-license. In addition, Hanwha's three-year patent dispute did not achieve satisfactory results, nor did it stop LONGi Green Energy's module shipment ranking from continuing to climb the pace of continuous climbing, from 2020 to 2022, LONGi Green Energy ranked first in the global PV module ranking for three consecutive years. Correspondingly, Hanwha has been moving lower on the list and falling out of the top 10 in global module shipments in 2023.

In fact, among the top 10 global module shipments in 2023, only one foreign PV company remains, First Solar. In 2024, Chinese photovoltaic companies have fully "dominated" the top 12 positions in the world.

This has also become an important background for the evolution of the PV patent dispute. According to the statistics of the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, since the second half of 2024, JA Solar, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, LONGi Green Energy, and Canadian Solar have initiated patent lawsuits (including counterclaims) in many domestic and foreign photovoltaic markets. Among them, Trina Solar, JinkoSolar, LONGi Green Energy, and Canadian Solar are both plaintiffs and defendants. The most talked-about is Trina Solar's announcement in February this year of two patent infringement allegations against Canadian Solar, with a claim amount of more than 1 billion yuan.

In an interview with reporters, Wang Ping, an expert from Kangde Think Tank and a lawyer at Longan Shanghai Law Firm, said that the core reason for the high complexity of photovoltaic patent litigation cases lies in the high technical threshold, and the patents involve interdisciplinary disciplines such as material science, nanostructure, and optical coating, which need to rely on detailed comparison by third-party technical appraisal institutions (such as China Patent Technology Development Corporation). "Although the uncertainty of the process and outcome of patent infringement litigation will have a complex impact on the market value of patent-intensive enterprises, enterprises will also be more active in filing patent infringement lawsuits to protect their technological innovations."

Photovoltaic bigwigs debate: patents become a new weapon of competition?

In this round of patent battles, the attitudes of the photovoltaic bigwigs involved have attracted much attention from the outside world.

During the "China Photovoltaic Storage Original Technology Forum", Li Zhenguo, President of LONGi Green Energy, and Qu Xiaohua, Chairman of Canadian Solar, appeared in front of the media camera.

"I'm very sad that China's photovoltaic has entered the era of 'dark forest', and patents have become a weapon of competition." Qu Xiaohua told more than a dozen media, including the 21st Century Business Herald, that he opposes the malicious competition of photovoltaic companies in the name of patent protection.

Li Zhenguo called for independent innovation and China's original technology to contribute wisdom and strength to enterprises and the photovoltaic industry through the cycle, rather than setting up obstacles to the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry through commercial purposes.

The

21st Century Business Herald reporter noticed that in the patent disputes between JinkoSolar and LONGi Green Energy, Trina Solar and Canadian Solar, one of the details of the controversy is that JinkoSolar and Trina Solar use "bought" patented technology. According to reports, almost all of the TOPCon patents sued by JinkoSolar, Trina Solar and JA Solar are derived from the photovoltaic patent portfolios previously purchased by South Korea's LG Solar - after announcing its complete withdrawal from the photovoltaic manufacturing industry, LG transferred 745 patents to JinkoSolar in September 2022, and in March 2024, JinkoSolar successively transferred some patents to Trina Solar and JA Solar.

"At present, many of the basic patents of TOPCon in China are not developed by Chinese companies themselves, but are obtained from outsourcing." A photovoltaic company previously said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that because foreign companies have researched TOPCon technology earlier, the patents formed by it are earlier, and it is difficult for follow-up technology research and development to bypass these basic patents.

However, he believes that "whether it is a self-developed patent or an outsourced patent, this does not affect the legitimacy of the enterprise to initiate patent rights protection." ”

"Intellectual property is an intangible asset of a business. My intellectual property rights have been encroached upon, and I don't defend my rights, where do you say fairness and justice are? Gao Jifan, chairman of Trina Solar, said in a recent interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that there is a misunderstanding of Trina Solar's rights protection in some of the current views, "Unswervingly promoting innovation and safeguarding intellectual property rights is the demand of Trina Solar's own development, and it is also the demand of the photovoltaic industry to break the 'involution' and high-quality development, and everyone should understand it correctly." ”

"Too many patent disputes in the photovoltaic industry at home and abroad may consume too many resources, which is not conducive to benign interaction and development." When asked what his views are on photovoltaic patent protection, Liu Hanyuan, chairman of the board of directors of Tongwei Group, recently told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the industry should think about how to grasp the "degree" of patent protection, and "this should be understood and faced in two parts." It is necessary not only to actively protect innovation and respect patents and intellectual property rights, but also to form a benign atmosphere for the protection of intellectual property rights and patents that is coordinated, understood and respected by each other. ”

However, although the industry generally believes that patent disputes are inseparable from the entanglement of commercial interests, in the face of the intensifying "patent war", the entire Chinese photovoltaic industry and Chinese photovoltaic enterprises have indeed reached the moment to think about how to build an intellectual property system belonging to China's photovoltaic industry.

"We must better play the role of standard guidance and intellectual property protection, and strengthen the synergy of technical standards and intellectual property rights." Li Ting, director of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, recently revealed at the open forum that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will work with the State Intellectual Property Office to study and formulate relevant policy documents for the construction of the intellectual property system of the photovoltaic industry, and promote the solution of problems such as technical route drive and lack of original technology.