‘It’s dishonest when you occur to copy people’s expertise’ – Maxeon CEO on expertise patent lawsuits – Phase 2
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The firm has also opened a suite of lawsuits over tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cell expertise in the US. the assign it’s making an try to open a TOPCon manufacturing facility.
Talking to us at Intersolar Europe 2024 last week, Mulligan explained these patent conditions and Maxeon’s technological offering. The predominant fragment of the interview lined the firm’s most modern monetary difficulties and the impact of contemporary antidumping tariffs on the US portray voltaic market.
PV Tech Top payment: You’ve introduced a set of lawsuits against Aiko Solar in Europe over your cell expertise patents, with blended success thus a ways. Would possibly perchance well you focus on me by them?
Bill Mulligan: We predict about that IBC expertise is doubtless the subsequent expertise after TOPCon. We’re already growing our Maxeon 8 IBC expertise, in suppose that will be our stable focus going forward.
We watch a number of key opponents approaching, mainly Aiko, and we factor in slightly strongly that they’re infringing on our expertise. So, as you noticed, we filed a swimsuit against Aiko a number of months previously in the Netherlands. We didn’t prevail on the preliminary injunction, but the bar for injunctions is slightly high. So we didn’t lose the swimsuit; we merely didn’t derive the injunction.
They had been in a position to full some suave lawyering and solid doubt on a number of of the analytical measurements we did. So, we’ve redone these measurements – we had been correct obviously. We’re going to charm the decision.
You’ve now appealed the case against the injunction and introduced a recent case. How is this one slightly a number of?
The patent merely issued [on 19 June] is a ways extra mammoth than the patent we sued on in the Netherlands. It’s a unitary patent, which is a recent course of in the EU the assign you’re now not filing in every individual country; there’s a pack of nations. So it’s a broader patent; it’s extra elementary.
Satirically, one of many issues Aiko admitted of their defence became as soon as that they’ve the cell structure, but they had been arguing about whether or now not they be pleased doping in a particular assign in the trench. In suppose that they admitted that they’ve this structure, and the contemporary patent issue doesn’t require the doping in the trench, it merely requires the structure. So we reflect we’re in a slightly stable arena. But we’ll watch – it’s litigation, you by no manner know the scheme this might perchance match.
What are you looking out out for out of the lawsuit?
There’s a full differ of outcomes that might perchance doubtless be anything else from utterly blockading them from entering particular markets to a number of originate of licensing settlement.
We’ve invested hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of dollars in study and pattern (R&D) and built a sizable patent portfolio. I reflect now we be pleased the strongest intellectual portfolio of someone in the portray voltaic commerce. And now we be pleased to defend it. It’s dishonest when you occur to copy people’s expertise, and we merely can’t tolerate that. However the flip aspect is that a sizable firm like Aiko Solar believes here is the long stride, correct? In suppose that they’re merely going to be pleased to play by our principles on story of we non-public that dwelling.
Within the US your lawsuits be pleased taking beneath consideration TOPCon tech, and you’ve issued them against a set of opponents. How are they going?
When you witness lend a hand, SunPower presented papers on passivated contacts manner lend a hand in 2008 – 2009. Fortunately, we filed patents on TOPCon that we’re irrespective of whether you expend it on the front or the lend a hand of the cell; our incarnation is lend a hand contact so we expend them on the lend a hand. But, , passivated contacts obtained accessible – I reflect the first team to open working on it became as soon as Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Methods ISE (Fraunhofer ISE), their lineage obtained into China and that’s what launched the total TOPCon thing.
But we had been the first to derive it, and we patented it, and the patents are slightly mammoth. Within the US, they’re elementary – these must now not course of-simplest patents, they’re for the real physical originate. So we in actuality feel practically about it.
It’s going to take the time. I will advise that we’re getting slightly a number of curiosity and slightly a number of questions, each from opponents and from customers. Potentialities can sooner or later be liable, as successfully, if they aquire an infringing product.
Why be pleased you simplest introduced the conditions now?
One in every of the issues you’ll want to forestall is expose that there are real damages. TOPCon hasn’t made its manner into the US unless very now not too long previously. It’s been accessible for a whereas, but our strongest patent became as soon as in the US so we wanted to file there. We needed to wait unless we might perchance very successfully accept physical samples of product in the United States.
