A Cogenra – SolarCity lawsuit is under way. SolarCity has been hit with a lawsuit by California company Cogenra Solar Inc. and venture capital firm Khosla Ventures for intellectual property theft. Cogenra Solar is a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation.
Solar City, owned by Elon Musk, has been accused of misappropriating the manufacturing methods, trade secrets and other intellectual property of Cogenra Solar. The claim is that this gave SolarCity knowledge of the singled-cell technology used by Cogenra Solar that is should not have had.
Single cell solar panels offer the highest rates of efficiency of any solar panels due to their construction from the highest grades of silicon. Also known as monocrystalline solar panels, these solar panels offer 20% – 30% efficiency. SunPower recently introduced solar panels with an efficiency of 21.5%. These are the company’s X-Series.
Prior to its 2015 acquisition by SunPower, Cogenra had been looking for other investors, and a few had been expressing interest according to the Cogenra complaint. SolarCity was one of those expressing interest and was provided with confidential information.
Fundamentally, the lawsuit is based upon the claim that SolarCity and Silvena, a subsidiary, misappropriated trade secrets, manufacturing processes and other intellectual properties belonging to Cogenra Solar Inc. By doing so, SolarCity gained an undue competitive advantage in the development of single-cell solar modules.
The Cogenra – SolarCity lawsuit is about misappropriation (theft) of intellectual property belonging to Cogenra. According to SolarCity, a former employee had downloaded confidential information unlawfully and without Solar City’s knowledge.
That employee then downloaded this information to a personal storage device. He subsequently joined SunPower as a senior sales manager. When this was discovered, Solar City immediately informed SunPower of what had happened. No issue there – you might think!
However, this is apparently the main reason for the Cogenra – SolarCity lawsuit. The former believes that, in spite of the subsequent action taken by SolarCity, it still acquired intellectual property unlawfully. Khosla Ventures involvement in this is that from 2009-2015 it owned around 80% of Cogenra.
The complaint fails to reveal any secret that Cogenra actually owns, let alone what had supposedly been misappropriated. SolarCity refutes the claim that the company or its officials had any idea what was happening.
Once it discovered that potential trade secrets were compromised, it immediately informed Cogenra. Will the Cogenra – SolarCity lawsuit happen – who knows!
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