First Solar sues JA Solar and Corning's Phoenix plant over a patent China's patent office invalidated

The fourth suit drags Corning into the docket

On October 1, First Solar▼−0.60% — First Solar, down 0.60 percent today, America's leading solar manufacturer, sued four JA Solar entities and American Panel Solutions in the US District Court for the District of Delaware over US Patent 9,130,074↗, which covers how tunnel oxide passivated contact, or TOPCon, crystalline-silicon cells are made; the design is rapidly displacing the older PERC architecture across global supply chains ¹².

American Panel Solutions, a wholly owned unit of the glass and materials group Corning, runs the 2 GW module plant in Phoenix that Corning bought from JA Solar in July 2025↗ as tax-credit rules squeezed Chinese-owned US factories ¹³. First Solar seeks damages and a permanent injunction halting the import, assembly and sale of the accused modules ¹⁴.

JA Solar and American Panel Solutions are the fourth maker group named since February 2025, after JinkoSolar, Canadian Solar and Trina Solar ¹. A February 2026 petition at the US International Trade Commission, which can bar imports, named ten respondent groups from Axitec to VSUN; First Solar withdrew it in September in favor of district courts↗, and its enforcement has also reached T1 Energy, buyer of Trina's Texas plant ¹⁴.

The plaintiff does not make the product it is suing over

First Solar builds thin-film cadmium telluride modules in the United States, not the crystalline-silicon cells that displaced them ²⁵. The patent arrived with TetraSun, a cell-technology startup First Solar bought in 2013, and holds through 2030 and beyond, so each suit is a claim on the rival architecture's American sales for the rest of the decade ¹².

The foundation is contested. In May 2026, China's patent office invalidated every claim of the '074 patent on a JinkoSolar challenge↗, and JinkoSolar and Canadian Solar seek the same outcome in a US reexamination ¹. The US Patent Trial and Appeal Board, for its part, declined JinkoSolar's inter partes review petition, a validity challenge, on November 20, 2025 ¹.

The bull case and the patent share one decade

Truist▲+3.66% — Truist, up 3.66 percent today analyst Christopher Souther upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold on October 12 with a $270 target↗, up from $229, citing pricing supported into the 2030s and a 44-cent-a-watt Section 232 import floor on foreign silicon modules from early December ⁵⁶. Series 7, First Solar's current module line, is sold out through 2028, so the payoff sits in late-decade bookings ⁵⁶. The underlying business is not the worry: gross margin hit a 12-quarter high of 57.3% in the second quarter ⁷.

A 4% rally on October 13 took the shares to $186.21, still down 29% for the year after a slide of roughly 32%, and Truist's case rests on tariffs and order books, not the litigation ⁵⁶. Morgan Stanley▲+0.41% — Morgan Stanley, up 0.41 percent today flagged higher rates as a valuation risk the next day, when the stock fell 4.01% ⁸. On October 15, Citadel entities tied to Ken Griffin disclosed 5,409,576 shares, 5.0% of the 107,469,788 outstanding, in a Schedule 13G↗ certified ordinary-course and passive ⁹.

A Delaware injunction would reach the Phoenix plant's assembly and sales; a US invalidation would end the damages-and-licensing claim through 2030 ¹. Watch the reexamination docket: the patent runs to 2030, and the challenge that could end it is already under way.