Chinese enterprises won the photovoltaic patent war this time!

Digital New Energy DataBM.

On October 10, 2025, JinkoSolar filed a request to the State Intellectual Property Office of China to declare all the above patents invalid, and argued that the patent should be declared invalid from the perspectives of patent protection scope, novelty and creativity.

To afore-mentioned announcement, the personage inside course of study expresses to media: "This result is very advantageous to domestic photovoltaic company." The person said that the patent is the same Chinese patent as US9130074B2 of First Solar, an American photovoltaic company. The scope of

this invalidation involves one core battery patent of First Solar and 17 of its claims, and the invalidation of this patent "will bring great pressure to First Solar".

First Solar announced a lawsuit against JinkoSolar and its affiliates in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, accusing the latter of infringing its TOPCon patented technology, US9130074B2.

The patented technology was acquired by First Solar through its acquisition of Tetrasun in 2013.

With this patent, First Solar sued Atlas in the same court for the same reason in May 2025, and the patent involved was also US9130074B2.

In response to First Solar's allegations, JinkoSolar and Atlas have responded by filing IPR proceedings (multi-party review proceedings, similar to patent invalidation proceedings) with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).

However, they were eventually rejected on the grounds that "the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) exercised his discretion in accordance with relevant regulations and decided not to initiate IPR."

At present, JinkoSolar has submitted EPR procedure (unilateral retrial procedure) to USPTO for First Solar patented technology.

While the JinkoSolar and Atlas cases have yet to come to an end, First Solar is still expanding the scope of its patent war.

On February 27, 2026, First Solar filed a local time, First Solar filed a "337 investigation" against 47 photovoltaic companies with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on the grounds that the above TOPCon technology patents were infringed . Of the

47 enterprises mentioned above, 29 enterprises (including overseas subsidiaries) have Chinese-funded background. They are Runyang (5) , Atlas (6) , Trina Solar (5) ,

Even so, the above announcement still has important reference value for the patent cases involving Chinese photovoltaic enterprises in the United States. At the same time, it also adds an important weight to the counterattack of Chinese photovoltaic enterprises in the United States.