Solannex Strikes Again, Accuses Nanosolar of Patent Infringement

In a previous post, I wrote about Solannex’s patent infringement suit against Santa Clara, California, thin-film photovoltaic (PV) company MiaSolé.

Solannex struck again earlier this month, this time accusing San Jose-based Nanosolar of patent infringement.

The complaint is not publicly available, so we don’t know which patent(s) Solannex is asserting, but a report on the filing of a patent or trademark suit (Solannex-Nanosolar_Report) submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office indicates the suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland on February 4th.

The MiaSolé case involves Solannex’s U.S. Patent No. 7,635,810, entitled “Substrate and collector grid structures for integrated photovoltaic arrays and process of manufacturing such arrays,” (’810 Patent).

The ’810 Patent is directed to interconnection structures for PV cells including electrically conductive “fingers” that allow electrical communication between the top and bottom surfaces of an interconnect region.

See my post about the MiaSolé case for a more detailed discussion of the ’810 Patent.

It’s hard to predict how wide a net Solannex will cast with its patent enforcement activity. But one thing is for sure: if you’re in thin-film, be careful where you point your fingers.

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.