Panasonic partners with GS-Solar

Panasonic announced last week that it will transfer its solar manufacturing subsidiary, Panasonic Energy Malaysia, to GS-Solar, while separating its photovoltaic research and development function in order to establish a new company with the Chinese partner. The goal of this partnership is to advance heterojunction photovoltaic technologies and optimize production by sharing information. While Panasonic is a multinational electronics corporation with a large and consistently growing patent portfolio in the Thin Film Photovoltaics sector, GS-Solar has much fewer patent documents. This gap in intellectual property may have led to the Chinese company acquiring the Japanese company’s subsidiary.