Liu Yanlong, Secretary-General of China Industrial Association of Power Sources: Beware of the Patent Lawsuits

 patent lawsuits

Entering the year of 2019, there has been a rapid change in the industry of power battery. On the Shangrao Summit of the 2019 China New Energy Entrepreneur Forum, Liu Yanlong, secretary-general of China Industrial Association of Power Sources noted that with the rising market share of China’s power battery, a lot of grand foreign institutes and enterprises start filing lawsuits on China’s battery & materials enterprises on patents and asking for charges, which should be paid sufficient attentions by domestic enterprises.

In fact, the lithium battery industry was first developed in Japan, then promoted by Korea, where the two global giants Samsung SDI and LG Chem were born. After the successful achievements reached by the BYD and the CATL, more and more market shares in lithium battery are being occupied by Chinese enterprises, while there are still a lot of risks hidden accompanying with opportunities.

In Liu’s thinking, even there has been a great progress in China’s power battery technology, there still exists a huge gap between Chinese enterprises and the foreign ones in core technology. With the enlarging market shares of China’s power battery, more and more foreign institutes and enterprises start filing lawsuits on China’s battery & materials enterprises on patents and asking for charges.

Not long before, LG applied to the ITC of forbidding importing the ATL battery for the reason the ATL exported large quantities of battery of low prices as well as low qualities to the US. To intensify, LG filed a patent lawsuit to the ATL in the US, claiming ATL had infringed three of its battery separator patents. As a result , the ITC published an announcement on November 21 that it had launched the 337 Investigation targeting at some of China’s battery and other electrochemical devices.

Liu added that even the both sides has reached a reconciliation, ATL was still charged. Regarding the foreign enterprises may file more patent requirements to Chinese battery separator enterprises, the association is trying their best to prepare an IP association to fight against the trend and arouse great awareness of domestic enterprises on patents.

April 18, 2019

Source: National Business Daily

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