GE, Siemens Gamesa Settle Patents Dispute Outside Courts

Global wind energy conglomerates GE and Siemens Gamesa have announced that they have reached an amicable settlement to end both their legal cases regarding patent disputes in connection with the Haliade-X wind turbine. The two firms have multiple pending cases in Europe and the US. Both GE and Siemens Gamesa have kept the settlement terms confidential.

 “GE and Siemens Gamesa have reached an amicable settlement of all their wind turbine technology patent disputes in the United States and Europe on confidential terms and have granted each other and their respective subsidiaries worldwide cross licenses under the asserted patent families, for the life of those patent families,” read their joint statement.

GE had previously held that its turbine design didn’t infringe on the Siemens-Gamesa patent and the company said in October last year that it will redesign Haliade-X rotor. Siemens Gamesa sued  GE in the US court in 2020.

In September 2022, US Federal Court Judge William Young had put brakes on the deployment of the technology in US projects as it found infringement on Siemens Gamesa patent. The court asked GE to pay royalty to Siemens Gamesa by GE at $30,000 per MW for the ongoing Massachusetts project. This royalty was double for the New Jersey’s Ocean Wind Project that has a capacity of 1.1 GW.

The Federation Court found that the two companies were not working for the latter public interest. But it said that there was an element to combat climate change.

UK Courts Have Different Decision

Suits regarding patent infringement are filed separately in national jurisdictions. In a similar suit filed by Siemens Gamesa in the UK, the court found that there was no patent infringement.

UK High Court justice Meade held that neither fully assembled Haliade-X turbine nor the rotor hub made any kind of infringement on the Siemens Gamesa patent. The decision that GE could supply the said turbines to the world’s largest offshore wind farm called Dogger Bank.

There is also a similar suit pending in  French Court before the mutual settlement of disputes kicked in.