On February 24, First Solar, an American photovoltaic company, applied to the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) for a "337 investigation" against 47 photovoltaic companies, involving multinational enterprises such as China, Germany, India, Japan and South Korea, on the grounds that the TOPCon technology patent (US9130074B2) had been infringed. Among them, there are 29 enterprises with Chinese background (including overseas subsidiaries). They are Runyang Stock (5), Atlas (6), Trina Solar Energy (5), Jingao Technology (5) and Jingke Energy (8). At present, the case is in the stage of pre-filing review.
The patent was acquired by First Solar through its acquisition of Tetrasun in 2013, and includes granted and pending applications from many countries. In the first half of 2025, First solar launched a "patent war" against JinkoSolar and Atlas with this patent, and their counterattack application for IPR procedure (multi-party reexamination procedure, similar to patent invalidation procedure) was rejected; at the end of the same year, JinkoSolar and others submitted EPR procedure (unilateral retrial procedure).
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