GaN patent fight widens as Navitas sues Renesas

Navitas Semiconductor has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Renesas Electronics in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that Renesas’ gallium nitride power semiconductor products infringe four Navitas patents. The complaint extends a legal dispute that already includes a separate trade-secret case brought by Renesas against Navitas in California.

Navitas identifies US Patent Nos. 9,929,079; 11,545,838; 11,770,010; and 11,862,996 in its complaint and says the asserted products include Renesas’ SuperGaN power semiconductors. The company is seeking monetary damages and an order preventing further alleged infringement. The claims have not been adjudicated, and Renesas had not publicly responded to the new patent action when the complaint was announced.

The litigation runs alongside a case filed by Renesas on 22 July in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Renesas alleges that Navitas, chief executive Christopher Allexandre, and executive Felicia Cheng misappropriated confidential information relating to GaN technology and commercial strategy. Those allegations are also unproven and will be considered separately from Navitas’ patent claims.

The two cases cover different forms of intellectual property. Patent litigation tests whether a product or process falls within claims granted by a patent office, while trade-secret litigation centres on information that a company says was confidential and improperly acquired or used. The parallel actions therefore create two distinct legal questions around competing GaN technologies rather than a single dispute being heard in two courts.

Renesas entered the GaN power market at greater scale through its acquisition of Transphorm, completed in June 2024. Transphorm’s SuperGaN portfolio gave Renesas an established line of high-voltage gallium nitride power devices and a body of manufacturing and device intellectual property. Navitas has built its own portfolio around GaNFast power integrated circuits, alongside GeneSiC silicon carbide devices, and says it has more than 300 patents issued or pending.

The commercial contest has moved beyond compact consumer power supplies. GaN devices are increasingly being developed for higher-power conversion in AI data centres, industrial electrification, and grid infrastructure, where switching losses, conversion efficiency, and power density directly affect the size and thermal design of power systems. Faster switching can allow smaller magnetic components and higher-frequency conversion stages, but practical performance still depends on device architecture, packaging, gate control, protection, and thermal management.

That makes protected device and integration technology more valuable as suppliers compete for longer-lived infrastructure designs. A power semiconductor selected for a server power shelf, industrial converter, or grid-related system can remain embedded in a platform through qualification and production cycles that are considerably longer than those of consumer accessories. Intellectual-property disputes can therefore become a supply consideration when customers are committing to products expected to remain available for several years.

There is no immediate finding that would require designers to alter existing Renesas or Navitas selections. Patent cases can be dismissed, settled, licensed, tried, or appealed, and any effect on product availability depends on the claims ultimately upheld and the remedies ordered. For customers, the relevant near-term development is that two competing GaN suppliers are now litigating both patent and trade-secret issues while continuing to pursue the same high-growth power markets.

The dispute also reflects a more mature phase for wide-bandgap power semiconductors. Early GaN adoption focused heavily on demonstrating efficiency and size advantages over silicon in relatively compact power converters. As the technology moves into data-centre and industrial systems, competition shifts towards manufacturing scale, qualification, reliability, system integration, and the intellectual property that supports those products.

Navitas filed the Texas case as Navitas Semiconductor Ireland LLC v. Renesas Electronics Corp, case number 2:26-cv-00676. Renesas’ California complaint remains a separate proceeding. The next substantive developments will come through the courts, where the scope of the asserted patents and the trade-secret allegations will have to be tested against evidence rather than company statements.