Following a patent infringement lawsuit filed against its German customer Sunfilm, Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor, display and solar panel manufacturing equipment giant Applied Materials Inc said late Monday that it believes its SunFab thin film solar tandem junction technology does not infringe European Patent No. EP 0 871 979 issued to the University of Neuchatel (the "Neuchatel patent"), which is at issue in the Sunfilm lawsuit.

On June 11, thin film photovoltaic provider Oerlikon Solar said it was taking steps to defend its intellectual property portfolio, which includes an exclusive license for the Neuchatel patent, which it obtained in 2003 from IMT, University of Neuchatel in Switzerland.

Oerlikon reminded that the Neuchatel patent describes fundamentals of micromorph tandem cell technology.

Sunfilm has publicly announced plans to enter the market with tandem junction photovoltaic modules, the manufacturing setup of which is designed to infringe upon both method and product that are protected under the patent, Oerlikon said. The company filed a complaint for patent infringement on June 10 with the German District Court of Duesseldorf.

The relevance of this patent has been made clear by the fact that several companies, including Sunfilm, have filed a notice of opposition with the European Patent office, Oerlikon said in a statement.

Applied asserted in a statement that its “unique and proprietary manufacturing process and tandem junction cell structure are the result of substantial research and development. The SunFab line is the only integrated production line for manufacturing thin film solar modules using ultra-large 5.7-square-meter glass panels.”

Further, Applied said its belief of non-infringement is based in part on differences between the SunFab tandem junction technology, as verified by scientific analyses such as Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy, and the claims of the Neuchatel patent.

The company also pointed out that the Neuchatel patent is already the subject of four separate opposition proceedings in the European Patent Office challenging its validity, based on prior art that was not disclosed or considered during the European patent examination process.

In response to the statement from Applied, C.J. Muse, semiconductor equipment and display technologies analyst for Lehman Brothers Equity Research noted that at least four companies have filed objections to Oerlikon's claim, among them Sunfilm (in March 2007), Q-cells (Germany), Schonfeld and Kaneka (Japan), with the European patent office.

“It is interesting to note that Oerlikon is going after the smaller Sunfilm or Applied’s customers rather than the larger AMAT, because, in many cases, part of the financing of expansion projects of these Sunfabs may be predicated on successful sales from the prior build. Given the suit, AMAT has two ways to contest it: non-infringement (i.e. it did not violate the patent) and/or invalidation (the patent is not valid in the first place because there was prior work on the same invention which was not quoted in the patent application) and we believe they are pursuing both routes,” Muse said in a report.

He also pointed out that Applied’s likely non-infringement claim as the company said in its statement is based on the techniques of raman spectroscopy, which would give information about bonding between atoms, and transmission electron microscopy, which is microstructure on a nanometer scale. “This means that AMAT is saying that the material that they are developing is different from the one covered in the patent,” Muse said.

Known in the US as tandem junction or micromorph in Europe, the thin film photovoltaic manufacturing technology involves the deposition of an amorphous silicon film and a microcrystalline silicon film whereby the thickness composition of both films and the residual hydrogen content in the microcrystalline silicon film, which is usually prepared using silane and hydrogen in plasma, could likely be different.

“Unless the university had been granted an extremely broad patent, we believe AMAT is arguing that its film have a different microstructure and properties. AMAT's likely invalidation claim as indicated in its press release is based closely on what the four companies had filed as an objection - that University of Neuchatel did not thoroughly vet the existing literature and therefore missed the prior art or the previous work on the invention of tandem junction and therefore the application itself and hence the patent is invalid,” Muse concluded.

By: DocMemory
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