On Monday, SolarEdge announced that it was filing a patent infringement lawsuit against Huawei Technologies and Huawei Technologies Düsseldorf, as well as WATTKRAFT Solar, a German distributor for Huawei.
The lawsuit asserts unauthorized use of patented technology, which is prohibited by law, and is intended to protect SolarEdge’s investment in its DC-optimized inverter technology.
Solar Power World reached out to Huawei for comment. The company provided the following statement:
As one of the world’s leading innovative solutions provider, Huawei works with excellent resources from all over the world to achieve technological advances. Huawei has established 14 R&D centers, dozens of open laboratories and joint innovation centers in 18 countries worldwide. Furthermore 45% of Huawei employees (80,000 in 2017) are engaged specifically in the area of R&D. Each year, over 10% of its revenue is invested in global innovations. Huawei, according to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), tops the list of global patent application in 2017 and 74,307 patents are granted as of December 31, 2017. As one of the largest intellectual property rights (IPR) owners, Huawei has a strong record of respecting IPR of others, in addition to doing whatever is required to protect our own IPR assets.
Huawei is a global leader within the PV industry and our success is derived from the spirit of customer-centric, continuous innovation, as well as always delivering the most competitive products and solutions to our valued customers. According to the global leading influential research companies’ reports, Huawei solar’s inverters are ranked as the global No.1 shipment consecutively over the past three years (2015, 2016 and 2017).
Huawei has just been served with the complaint filed by SolarEdge, and is evaluating the claims. Huawei does not believe that it has infringed any valid patent rights of SolarEdge and, accordingly, will defend its rights vigorously. Huawei is always customer-centric and, together with our partners, will continuously invest in R&D and technology innovation, to accelerate the positive development of the solar industry. If, to the extent that our customer receive any IP infringement assertion based on Huawei products delivered, Huawei will use every means to defend our products and protect our customers not to be affected by such assertions.
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