Maxeon Photo voltaic has initiated a patent infringement lawsuit in opposition to Canadian Photo voltaic alleging infringement of Maxeon’s TOPCon patents. Maxeon filed within the Japanese District of Texas.
Canadian Photo voltaic TOPCon module
After shopping for Solaria’s shingled-cell know-how patents final 12 months, Maxeon now holds over 1,650 granted patents and over 330 pending patent purposes associated to interdigitated again contact (IBC), shingled hypercell and tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) photo voltaic know-how. The corporate introduced final 12 months that it was investigating a number of corporations for infringement of Maxeon’s patents. This declare in opposition to Canadian Photo voltaic is the primary to be introduced.
“Maxeon has a robust heritage in growing photo voltaic cell know-how, main the event and commercialization of tunnel oxide passivated contacts,” mentioned Marc Robinson, Affiliate Common Counsel at Maxeon. “Years earlier than the moniker ‘TOPCon’ began for use within the business to explain a tunnel oxide passivated contact-based photo voltaic cell, our scientists and engineers had developed a number of methods to implement TOPCon know-how into each back-contact and front-contact photo voltaic cells. Maxeon has many patents associated to TOPCon know-how, with innovations drawn to elementary TOPCon photo voltaic cell architectures courting again to the 2000s. That is Maxeon’s first motion to implement its worthwhile patent rights in the US, and Maxeon will proceed to vigorously implement its patent rights in the US and its 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 Photo voltaic Cell with Shaped Emitter (granted in 2012 to SunPower)
- ‘053 patent: Entrance Contact Photo voltaic Cell with Shaped Emitter (granted in 2014 to SunPower)
- ‘315 patent: Photo voltaic Cells with Improved Lifetime, Passivation and/or Effectivity (granted in 2022 to SunPower)
- SunPower assigned its patents to Maxeon in 2022.
Canadian Photo voltaic has not but commented on this case.
Solaria filed a patent infringement go well with in opposition to Canadian Photo voltaic in 2020, alleging Canadian Photo voltaic stole Solaria’s patents for shingled photo voltaic modules. The Worldwide Commerce Fee discovered that Canadian Photo voltaic did infringe on Solaria’s patents, and the 2 corporations in the end agreed that Canadian Photo voltaic wouldn’t promote photo voltaic panels utilizing shingled know-how in the US for seven years.
