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First Solar has opted to pull its Section 337 filing from the U.S. International Trade Commission, a step the Arizona-based panel maker framed as a strategic adjustment to how it enforces its intellectual property rather than a retreat from its patent claims.
Enacted under the Tariff Act of 1930, Section 337 empowers the USITC to examine allegations of unfair competition and patent infringement tied to imported goods. Should the commission determine a violation occurred, it may impose exclusion orders barring infringing products from entering the country. The company’s original filing aimed to block inbound shipments of Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact cells and modules manufactured by rivals. A favorable ruling would have cut off supplies from key global producers, constricting domestic equipment availability and delaying project buildouts while developers scramble to satisfy record electricity needs.
First Solar attributed its decision to drop the trade case to recent federal Section 232 measures targeting imported polysilicon and its derivatives. According to the company, those new trade steps create border-level protection and free it to pursue legal remedies within the United States.
First Solar itself does not produce TOPCon panels. Its operations center exclusively on thin-film Cadmium Telluride semiconductor technology, a photovoltaic approach wholly separate from silicon wafer-based products. The firm’s TOPCon patent holdings trace back to its 2013 acquisition of TetraSun, giving it control over significant intellectual property covering an N-type silicon technology that its main competitors rely on heavily.
Even as the trade probe ends, First Solar said it will press ahead with active patent infringement litigation in U.S. District Court against several large solar manufacturers, among them affiliates of Canadian Solar, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar, and T1 Energy. Those district court matters had been paused while the USITC process played out.
Jason Dymbort, General Counsel at First Solar, stated that the Section 232 action taken by the current administration of President Donald Trump assists in leveling the competitive field at the border, and that the company remains more committed than ever to upholding its intellectual property rights and the rule of law at home. He described the withdrawal as a procedural step that opens the path for pending cases to proceed and for further suits the company expects to file.
Parties named in the original trade complaint contested the substance of the withdrawn filing. Domestic manufacturer T1 Energy welcomed the conclusion of the USITC investigation. Russell Gold, a spokesman for T1 Energy, remarked that First Solar may try to frame the story, but the facts speak plainly. He noted that T1 Energy is the sole American business that both holds patents for high efficiency TOPCon solar and presently produces TOPCon solar modules. Gold expressed satisfaction that First Solar voluntarily withdrew what T1 Energy regards as a defective Section 337 complaint that would have impeded necessary energy output at a moment when the nation requires every affordable kilowatt it can generate.
First Solar’s TOPCon patent portfolio encompasses issued patents covering cell architectures in the United States, Canada, China, Europe, and Asia, with protections running through 2030 and beyond. With the USITC trade complaint withdrawn, previously stayed district court litigation can now resume, launching the next stage of the sector-wide patent conflict over high-efficiency TOPCon manufacturing.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
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Major US solar manufacturer
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Former Cree LED business
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Aluminum nitride substrates
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