Heraeus Group, the world’s largest supplier of silver photovoltaic conductive paste, yesterday said it has gained 10 percent market share due to its ongoing patent lawsuit against Taiwan’s Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾).
The German company’s remarks came as the patent lawsuit entered the next stage of proceedings: German’s Intellectual Property Court has launched a new investigation into whether Giga Solar infringes on Heraeus’ patent rights.
In August, the court confirmed the validity of Heraeus’ Taiwan patent No. I432539 after 14 months of investigations and dismissed all arguments raised by Giga Solar.
“Customers are a little bit nervous [about being involving in a patent infringement lawsuit],” Heraeus’ photovoltaics unit president Andreas Liebheit told a media briefing in Taipei. “We are winning more new customers because they feel safer using Heroes pastes.”
Heraeus, which has been making silver photovoltaic conductive paste for more than three decades, said the lawsuit helped it expand its market share to about 35 percent in the current quarter, compared with 25 percent last year.
Heraeus said it has secured a new partnership and orders from China’s major solar-cell maker Jinko Solar Co Ltd (晶科能源).
“Although we cannot predict the outcome of the lawsuit, we are well prepared for seeking compensation from those who violate our patents,” Liebheit said.
He declined to disclose specific figures.
“We believe we are on the right track, and we believe that we will win this case,” Liebheit said.
The company holds about 300 granted patents, with more than 700 employees working at its research and development centers worldwide.
Giga Solar on Wednesday said that it expected no significant impact from the patent dispute. The company did not expect a final ruling any time soon.
Instead, shipments are likely to grow between 30 percent and 40 percent this quarter from last quarter, as demand is picking up, Giga Solar chairman Jimmy Chen (陳繼明) said.
Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光能源) chairman Sam Hong (洪傳獻) yesterday said that the third quarter was the worst period.
“Demand is recovering as supply chain inventories have reduced significantly,” Hong said at a separate news conference introducing the company’s new products.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day