Maxeon Photograph Voltaic has initiated a patent infringement lawsuit in opposition to Canadian Photograph Voltaic alleging infringement of Maxeon’s TOPCon patents. Maxeon filed throughout the Japanese District of Texas.
After purchasing for Solaria’s shingled-cell know-how patents last yr, Maxeon now holds over 1,650 granted patents and over 330 pending patent capabilities related to interdigitated once more contact (IBC), shingled hypercell and tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) photograph voltaic know-how.
The company launched the ultimate yr that it was investigating a number of companies for infringement of Maxeon’s patents. This declaration in the direction of Canadian Photograph voltaic is the first to be launched.
“Maxeon has a strong heritage in creating photograph voltaic cell know-how, predominant the occasion and commercialization of tunnel oxide passivated contacts,” acknowledged Marc Robinson, Affiliate Primary Counsel at Maxeon. “Years sooner than the moniker ‘TOPCon’ started to be used throughout the enterprise to elucidate a tunnel oxide passivated contact-based photograph voltaic cell, our scientists and engineers had developed a number of strategies to implement TOPCon know-how into every back-contact and front-contact photograph voltaic cells.
Maxeon has many patents related to TOPCon know-how, with improvements drawn to elementary TOPCon photograph voltaic cell architectures relationship again to the 2000s. That’s Maxeon’s first movement to implement its useful patent rights within the USA, and Maxeon will proceed to vigorously implement its patent rights within the USA and its totally different markets.”
Maxeon is alleging infringement on three patents: Nos. 8,222,516 (the ’516 patent), 8,878,053 (the ’053 patent), and 11,251,315 (the ’315 patent).
- ‘516 patent: Entrance Contact Photograph voltaic Cell with Long-established Emitter (granted in 2012 to SunPower)
- ‘053 patent: Entrance Contact Photograph voltaic Cell with Long-established Emitter (granted in 2014 to SunPower)
- ‘315 patent: Photograph voltaic Cells with Improved Lifetime, Passivation, and/or Effectivity (granted in 2022 to SunPower)
- SunPower assigned its patents to Maxeon in 2022.
Canadian Photograph Voltaic has not however commented on this case.
Solaria filed a patent infringement go properly with in the direction of Canadian Photograph Voltaic in 2020, alleging that Canadian Photograph Voltaic stole Solaria’s patents for shingled photograph voltaic modules. The Worldwide Commerce Payment found that Canadian Photograph Voltaic did infringe on Solaria’s patents, and the two companies in the long run agreed that Canadian Photograph Voltaic would not promote photograph Voltaic panels using shingled know-how within the USA for seven years.
