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.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Nvidia Corp’s GB300 platform is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of global artificial intelligence (AI) server rack shipments this year, while adoption of its next-generation Vera Rubin 200 platform is to gradually gain momentum after the third quarter of the year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said. Servers based on Nvidia’s GB300 chips entered mass production last quarter and they are expected to become the mainstay models for Taiwanese server manufacturers this year, Trendforce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) said in an interview. This year is expected to be a breakout year for AI servers based on a variety of chips, as
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance cooperation on the suspicious transaction analysis mechanism. This landmark agreement makes HSBC the first foreign bank in Taiwan to establish such a partnership with the High Prosecutors Office, underscoring its commitment to active anti-fraud initiatives, financial inclusion, and the “Treating Customers Fairly” principle. Through this deep public-private collaboration, both parties aim to co-create a secure financial ecosystem via early warning detection and precise fraud prevention technologies. At the signing ceremony, HSBC Taiwan CEO and head of banking Adam Chen (陳志堅)
RSS