Huawei wins patent lawsuit against SolarEdge in Europe

Huawei has won the lawsuit against SolarEdge for solar technology patent at European Patent Office. Appeal Board of the European Patent Office upheld the previous decision to revoke SolarEdge’s solar technology patent, which ended SolarEdge’s lawsuit against Huawei in Mannheim, Germany.

Heart of the matter:

In 2018, Israeli solar technology manufacturer SolarEdge filed a lawsuit in Mannheim, accusing Huawei and German distributor Wattkraft of infringing on three of its patents.

In mid-October this year, the Appeal Board of the European Patent Office rejected SolarEdge’s appeal against the patent revocation procedure EP 29 30 839 B1 (Case ID: TO678/20-3.5.02). The Appeals Board of the European Patent Office stated that this multi-level inverter patent is outdated.

The report pointed out that SolarEdge may withdraw the lawsuit in Mannheim in the next few days, otherwise the Israeli company will face a high cost of dismissing the infringement lawsuit.

To be mentioned, the other two infringement lawsuits that SolarEdge filed against Huawei in Mannheim were not smooth. In 2018, SolarEdge accused Huawei of infringing its European patents EP 2 135 348 B1 and EP 28 59 650 B1, the patents involved and solar inverters are related to the optimizer.

In October 2019, the Mannheim District Court dismissed the infringement lawsuit against EP 2 135 348 B1. SolarEdge appealed the decision to the Karlsruhe High District Court (Case No. 6 U 26/20), but the court declared the patent invalid in November 2020. SolarEdge subsequently appealed these two decisions to the Federal Court (Case No. X ZR 39/21), and the court has not yet ruled on these two appeals.

In June 2021, the Federal Patent Court upheld the third litigation patent EP 28 59 650 B1, but with some restrictions. Both SolarEdge and Huawei challenged the ruling (Case No: X ZR 79/21).

(via – ijiwei)