The Intellectual Property Specialized Committee of China Photovoltaic Industry Association, together with National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center and Electronic Intellectual Property Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, recently released the Annual Report on Patent Development of Photovoltaic Industry (2024). It is pointed out in the report that in recent years, China's photovoltaic industry has seen rapid expansion in scale, continuous progress in technological level, and continuous emergence of innovative achievements. As of December 31, 2023, for China's photovoltaic industry, there had been a cumulative total of 168,000 patent applications, 73,000 effective patents, and 22,000 effective invention patents, which all ranked first in the world.

With the continuous expansion of solar photovoltaic applications and increasing market demand, new types of batteries represented by TOPCon cells, BC cells and HIT cells (hereinafter referred to as "three types of cells") have gradually become the focus of the industry. Particularly, N-type TOPCon cells have replaced PERC cells as the mainstream products in the market since this year. With the accelerated industrialization of new technologies and new products, enterprises are paying more and more attention to innovation, patent layout and intellectual property protection.

The report indicates that in recent years, domestic innovation subjects have continuously invested more and more in R&D, patent applications of the three types of cells have shown rapid growth, industrial technology continues to make progress, laboratory conversion efficiency has repeatedly broken the world record. As of December 31, 2023, there were respectively 6,162, 2,439 and 2,693 patents applied by China's applicants in the field of TOPCon cells, BC cells, HIT cells, accounting for 51%, 43.7% and 58.7% of the global applications, all ranking the first in the world. China has become an important driving force in the technological innovation of the three types of cells field.

From IPRdaily

June 27th, 2024