China's supreme court bans Infineon from selling GaN power chips in China — market-leader Innoscience secures major victory in multi-region patent war

China's supreme court bans Infineon from selling GaN power chips in China — market-leader Innoscience secures major victory in multi-region patent war Two suppliers building Nvidia's 800V AI-rack power chips now block each other from key markets. China's Supreme People's Court on Friday upheld an injunction prohibiting Infineon from selling the disputed gallium nitride (GaN) products in mainland China, the final word in a patent case brought by Suzhou-based rival Innoscience, SCMP reports. Both companies sit on Nvidia’s approved supplier list for 800V AI-rack power delivery, and the judgment caps a year of litigation that has handed each side a win in different jurisdictions. The court upheld a May 27th judgment from the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court that found Infineon infringed two Innoscience invention patents, ordering it to stop selling, offering, and importing the products and to pay 10 million yuan (roughly $1.48 million) in damages. In May, the full U.S. International Trade Commission affirmed an earlier determination that Innoscience infringed an Infineon patent and ordered import and sales bans, pending a 60-day presidential review period. Innoscience disputes this the impact of this, stating that the same ITC determination cleared its redesigned current products and that its U.S. shipments continue uninterrupted. A German case at the Munich District Court I added a third front, where judges found infringement by Innoscience in 2025, with further patent and utility-model trials scheduled for this month. "This decision once again highlights the robustness of Infineon's intellectual property," said Johannes Schoiswohl, senior vice president and head of Infineon's GaN Systems business line, in a May statement on the ITC ruling. GaN is the underlying material that’s powering Nvidia’s shift away from 54V rack distribution toward an 800 VDC architecture for racks pushing past 200kW toward a megawatt. Raising rack voltage to 800V cuts current and copper across the conversion chain, and GaN's faster switching shrinks the power stages between the rack and the GPU core. Both Infineon and Innoscience appear on Nvidia's silicon-provider roster for that transition, alongside Texas Instruments, Navitas, and onsemi. Innoscience led the global GaN power-device market in 2024 at 29.9% according to TrendForce data, with Infineon fourth at 10.3%. Infineon counters with its 300mm GaN-on-silicon manufacturing and around 450 GaN patent families against Innoscience’s 8-inch fabs in Suzhou and Zhuhai. Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan together accounted for 38% of Infineon's fiscal 2025 revenue, per its annual report. Innoscience's Hong Kong-listed shares rose 16.6% on Monday on the back of the ruling, while Shanghai-listed compound-semiconductor makers Silan Microelectronics and Sanan Optoelectronics each hit the 10% daily limit, and power-chip maker China Resources Microelectronics climbed about 13%. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.