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First Solar, a manufacturer of thin-film cadmium telluride solar products, has filed a patent lawsuit against Chinese solar PV producer JA and several of its subsidiaries, together with American Panel Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US-based PV manufacturer Corning, according to PV Tech.
The case was lodged in the US District Court for the District of Delaware and names JA Solar Technology, JA Solar International, JA Solar Vietnam and JA Solar Industrial alongside American Panel Solutions as defendants.
First Solar contends that the companies infringed US Patent No. 9,130,074, which covers methods for manufacturing tunnel oxide passivated contact crystalline silicon PV solar cells.
The action is the most recent TOPCon patent lawsuit the company has brought against a solar PV manufacturer. First Solar has previously filed suits against Jinko, Canadian Solar, T1 Energy and Trina Solar.
First Solar began investigating major rivals in 2024 over alleged intellectual property infringements and has since filed multiple patent lawsuits as well as a complaint with the US International Trade Commission. Last month, the company announced plans to voluntarily withdraw its Section 337 complaint with the commission while continuing to pursue its existing TOPCon patent lawsuits in the US District Court.
PV Tech contacted JA and Corning about the alleged patent infringement. Corning acquired JA’s US 2GW module assembly plant in Arizona last year, and the facility subsequently became an asset of American Panel Solutions.
Jason Dymbort, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary at First Solar, indicated that the company has been clear it will actively defend its intellectual property rights in the US and internationally. He said the lawsuit seeks to hold JA Solar and American Panel Solutions accountable for what he described as unauthorised use of First Solar’s patented technology, and he added that the case reinforces the need for TOPCon manufacturers operating in the United States to respect the established framework of intellectual property law.
First Solar obtained the US TOPCon patents and related international counterparts through its acquisition of TetraSun in 2013. The portfolio includes issued patents in several jurisdictions, among them the US, Australia, Canada, China and the European Union, with validities extending to 2030 and beyond.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
This report is an independent strategic market study that provides a structured, commercially grounded analysis of the market for Thin Film Solar Cells in the United States. It is designed for battery and storage manufacturers, power-electronics suppliers, system integrators, EPC partners, developers, utilities, investors, and strategic entrants that need a clear view of deployment demand, technology positioning, manufacturing exposure, safety and qualification burden, project economics, and competitive structure.
The analytical framework is designed to work both for a single specialized storage or conversion component and for a broader solar photovoltaic technology category, where market structure is shaped by chemistry, duration, project economics, system integration, safety requirements, route-to-market, and grid-interface logic rather than by one narrow customs heading alone. It defines Thin Film Solar Cells as Thin Film Solar Cells are photovoltaic devices where the active semiconductor material is deposited as one or more thin layers (typically a few micrometers thick) onto a substrate, using technologies like Cadmium Telluride (CdTe), Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS), or amorphous silicon (a-Si) and examines the market through deployment use cases, buyer environments, upstream input dependencies, conversion and integration stages, qualification and safety requirements, pricing architecture, commercial channels, and country capability differences. Historical analysis typically covers 2012 to 2025, with forward-looking scenarios through 2035.
This report is designed to answer the questions that matter most to decision-makers evaluating an energy-storage, battery, renewable-integration, or power-conversion market.
At its core, this report explains how the market for Thin Film Solar Cells actually functions. It identifies where demand originates, how supply is organized, which technological and regulatory barriers influence adoption, and how value is distributed across the value chain. Rather than describing the market only in broad terms, the study breaks it into analytically meaningful layers: product scope, segmentation, end uses, customer types, production economics, outsourcing structure, country roles, and company archetypes.
The report is particularly useful in markets where buyers are highly specialized, suppliers differ significantly in technical depth and regulatory readiness, and the commercial landscape cannot be understood only through top-line market size figures. In this context, the study is designed not only to estimate the size of the market, but to explain why the market has that size, what drives its growth, which subsegments are the most attractive, and what it takes to compete successfully within it.
The report is based on an independent analytical methodology that combines deep secondary research, structured evidence review, market reconstruction, and multi-level triangulation. The methodology is designed to support products for which there is no single clean official dataset capturing the full market in a directly usable form.
The study typically uses the following evidence hierarchy:
The analytical framework is built around several linked layers.
First, a scope model defines what is included in the market and what is excluded, ensuring that adjacent products, downstream finished goods, unrelated instruments, or broader chemical categories do not distort the market boundary.
Second, a demand model reconstructs the market from the perspective of consuming sectors, workflow stages, and applications. Depending on the product, this may include Large-scale solar farms, Low-light and high-temperature performance sites, Building facades and roofs requiring lightweight/flexible formats, and Off-grid and mobile power solutions across Utility Power Generation, Commercial & Industrial Real Estate, Construction & Building Materials, Consumer Electronics & Portable Gear, and Transportation & Aerospace and Material sourcing and target production, Deposition and cell fabrication, Module encapsulation and lamination, System design and integration engineering, and Performance validation and bankability assurance. Demand is then allocated across end users, development stages, and geographic markets.
Third, a supply model evaluates how the market is served. This includes Cadmium & Tellurium, Indium, Gallium, Selenium, Transparent conductive oxides (TCO) like ITO, Specialty glass and flexible substrate materials, and High-purity process gases, manufacturing technologies such as Vacuum deposition (sputtering, evaporation), Close-space sublimation (CSS) for CdTe, Solution-based and non-vacuum deposition processes, Monolithic integration and laser scribing, and Flexible substrate handling (polymer, metal foil), quality control requirements, outsourcing, contract manufacturing, integration, and project-delivery participation, distribution structure, and supply-chain concentration risks.
Fourth, a country capability model maps where the market is consumed, where production is materially feasible, where manufacturing capability is limited or emerging, and which countries function primarily as innovation hubs, supply nodes, demand centers, or import-reliant markets.
Fifth, a pricing and economics layer evaluates price corridors, cost drivers, complexity premiums, outsourcing logic, margin structure, and switching barriers. This is especially relevant in markets where product grade, purity, customization, regulatory burden, or service model materially influence economics.
Finally, a competitive intelligence layer profiles the leading company types active in the market and explains how strategic roles differ across upstream material suppliers, component and controls providers, OEMs, storage-system integrators, EPC partners, project developers, and distribution or service channels.
This report covers the market for Thin Film Solar Cells in its commercially relevant and technologically meaningful form. The scope typically includes the product itself, its major product configurations or variants, the critical technologies used to produce or deliver it, the core input categories required for manufacturing, and the services directly associated with its commercial supply, quality control, or integration into end-user workflows.
Included within scope are the product forms, use cases, inputs, and services that are necessary to understand the actual addressable market around Thin Film Solar Cells. This usually includes:
Excluded from scope are categories that may be technologically adjacent but do not belong to the core economic market being measured. These usually include:
The exact inclusion and exclusion logic is always a critical part of the study, because the quality of the market estimate depends directly on disciplined scope boundaries.
The report provides focused coverage of the United States market and positions United States within the wider global energy-storage and renewable-integration industry structure.
The geographic analysis explains local deployment demand, domestic capability, import dependence, project-development relevance, safety and approval burden, and the country’s strategic role in the wider market.
This study is designed for strategic, commercial, operations, project-delivery, and investment users, including:
In many energy-transition, storage, power-conversion, and project-driven markets, official trade and production statistics are not sufficient on their own to describe the true market. Product boundaries may cut across multiple tariff codes, several product categories may be bundled into the same official classification, and a meaningful share of activity may take place through customized services, captive supply, platform relationships, or technically specialized channels that are not directly visible in standard statistical datasets.
For this reason, the report is designed as a modeled strategic market study. It uses official and public evidence wherever it is reliable and scope-compatible, but it does not force the market into a purely statistical framework when doing so would reduce analytical quality. Instead, it reconstructs the market through the logic of demand, supply, technology, country roles, and company behavior.
This makes the report particularly well suited to products that are innovation-intensive, technically differentiated, capacity-constrained, platform-dependent, or commercially structured around specialized buyer-supplier relationships rather than standardized commodity trade.
The report typically includes:
The result is a structured, publication-grade market intelligence document that combines quantitative modeling with commercial, technical, and strategic interpretation.
Energy-Storage Market Structure and Company Archetypes
Leading US-based thin film solar producer with gigawatt-scale production.
Specializes in flexible CIGS panels for building-integrated and portable applications.
US subsidiary of Solar Frontier, focusing on utility-scale CIS projects.
Develops high-efficiency CIGS panels for residential and commercial use.
Produces lightweight, flexible CIGS panels for off-grid and portable power.
Focuses on lightweight, flexible CIGS for aerospace and consumer electronics.
Develops advanced CIGS deposition equipment for high-throughput production.
Developed proprietary thin film silicon technology; now integrated into First Solar.
Pioneered printed CIGS technology; ceased operations in 2013.
Developed CIGS on flexible substrates; closed in 2012.
Pioneered flexible amorphous silicon; filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
Produced flexible amorphous silicon panels; ceased operations.
Specializes in rollable, lightweight amorphous silicon for military and portable use.
Produces ultra-high-efficiency GaAs thin film cells for drones and IoT.
Develops lightweight, high-efficiency GaAs cells for aerospace.
Focuses on flexible CIGS for building-integrated photovoltaics.
Produces high-efficiency interdigitated back contact (IBC) cells, some thin film variants.
US arm of Hanwha, with some thin film R&D from former Hanergy assets.
Produces CdTe panels for residential and commercial markets.
Develops kerfless silicon wafers for thin film-like solar cells.
Develops advanced thin film solar using quantum dot technology.
Produces shingled-cell modules with thin film-like aesthetics.
Focuses on lightweight, peel-and-stick CIGS panels.
Produces flexible dye-sensitized solar cells for low-light applications.
Specializes in building-integrated thin film glass panels.
Integrates thin film cells into textiles for portable and architectural use.
Produces transparent thin film panels for skylights and facades.
Develops printable perovskite thin film technology.
Develops high-efficiency perovskite tandem thin film cells.
Develops tandem thin film cells for high efficiency.
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Free Data: Solar Cells and Light-Emitting Diodes — United States
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