According to the U.S. federal court case information website PacerMonitor, on January 17, local time in the United States, LONGi filed a lawsuit against Jinko Solar and its subsidiaries at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging patent infringement of Jinko Solar’s TOPCon and other multiple photovoltaic module products in the United States. LONGi is seeking to prohibit Jinko Solar and its subsidiaries from selling the allegedly infringing products in the United States and is demanding compensation for losses.
LONGi’s legal action can be seen as a countermeasure following Jinko Solar’s infringement lawsuit against. This incident serves as a reminder that enterprises must pay greater attention to the management and protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the process of technological innovation and market expansion.
In recent years, as competition in the photovoltaic (PV) industry has intensified, news of patent disputes among PV companies has been on the rise, raising the industry’s awareness of IPR protection to an unprecedented level. IPR protection in the PV industry was also a key topic at several important industry conferences held previously.
As the leading enterprises in the PV industry, they have all increased their efforts in IPR protection in recent years. Among them, LONGi, which has the highest R&D investment in the global PV industry, had obtained 3,166 authorized patents by the end of June 2024, with extensive and in-depth patent layouts in various technological fields, including TOPCon. This is also the main basis for LONGi’s lawsuit.
According to industry insiders, the patents that Jinko Solar is using in its infringement lawsuit against LONGi were not developed through independent innovation, but were sourced from the purchase of PV patent packages from LG Electronics at South Korea. In 2022, LG Electronics announced its complete exit from the PV manufacturing industry and decided to sell some of its PV patents. The batch of about 700 patents was acquired by ” Shangrao Xinyuan Yuedong Technology Development Co., Ltd.,” a subsidiary of Jinko Solar.
