Linton Crystal Technologies sues Jingsheng Mechanical over patent infringement, with a Tesla order dispute at the center.
It is learned that Linton Crystal Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Liancheng Numerical Control, has filed a lawsuit with the Marshall Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. of infringing two of its CZ crystal growth equipment patents, and seeking a permanent injunction.
This date leaves less than ten days before the Q3 window in which Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. is set to deliver 3 billion yuan worth of single-crystal furnace equipment to Tesla Motors's Texas factory.
Bringing the case to the state where Tesla Motors's factory is located, to the Marshall Division known as a "patent litigation paradise," and precisely timing the filing at the end of the delivery period, is a coincidence whose timing is exquisitely calibrated.
A Lawsuit Filed for Tesla to See
In its complaint, Liancheng Numerical Control requests remedies including "permanently enjoining the defendant and its officers, agents, employees... from further engaging in conduct that infringes the patents at issue."
In other words, Liancheng Numerical Control is not just seeking money; it wants a judge to order that Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. be barred from continuing to do business in the United States.
For a company that is delivering core equipment to Tesla Motors's 100GW solar factory in Texas, the destructive power of this litigation request is self-evident.
The Marshall Division chosen for this patent battle also carries considerable weight.
According to public reports, this court is known for the speed of its patent case proceedings and a relatively high win rate for patent holders, making it one of the recognized "patent litigation paradises" in the United States.
Simply put, this is a court that makes plaintiffs feel they "have a chance" and makes defendants feel "a headache."
Liancheng Numerical Control's legal team comes from Nixon Peabody, a law firm of considerable scale in the field of U.S. patent litigation. They know they are not choosing a court, but a tempo.
After the news broke, Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. recently responded in an announcement that its products and the patents at issue "adopt completely inconsistent technical methods, and there is no evidence that the company's products infringe the patents at issue."
But then again, Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. stated that as of the announcement date, it "has not yet received formal litigation documents issued by the court in connection with the aforementioned matter." It had not even received the original complaint before being scrutinized by the capital market and customers.
Both Are Losing Money; Whoever Runs Out of Food First Is Out
The most unusual aspect of this lawsuit is that the initiator, Liancheng Numerical Control, reported a net loss of 18.53 million yuan after deducting non-recurring gains and losses in the first half of 2026, with revenue down 24.72% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 19.1 million yuan, down 81.82% year-on-year.
For a loss-making company to spend heavily on a patent lawsuit in the United States, if the sole purpose were to "defend its rights," the calculation would be far too uneconomical.
The defendant, Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd., reported revenue of 3.452 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, down 40.47% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 232 million yuan, down 63.66% year-on-year.
Both companies are enduring the bottom of the solar cycle.
But Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. holds a 3 billion yuan order from Tesla Motors that has not been confirmed in a company announcement, accounting for about 26.4% of its total revenue for the full year of 2025.
For Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd., this order is not only a revenue issue but also an anchor for its overseas market strategy.
With domestic capacity expansion stalled in the PV equipment industry, overseas growth has become almost the only narrative. Whoever secures a benchmark customer of Tesla Motors's caliber first will gain a positional advantage in the next round of industry recovery.
Meanwhile, Liancheng Numerical Control's sales to LONGi Green Energy still accounted for 39.79% in 2025, and its 2026 interim report shows that its top five customers accounted for as much as 85.45% of revenue.
The fragility brought by customer concentration has been fully exposed during the industry downturn.
The Tesla Motors order also means the possibility of "breaking out of dependence on LONGi" for Liancheng Numerical Control.
If you cannot disrupt your opponent's delivery, at least make its customers begin to hesitate about whether it can still deliver. In commercial competition, to some extent, that alone has already been worth the legal fees.
Musk Is Waiting for Furnaces; the Court Is Waiting for Scheduling
The truly awkward role in this lawsuit is neither the plaintiff nor the defendant.
It is Tesla Motors.
Tesla Motors's "Crystal Sun" project in Fort Bend County, Texas, involves a total investment of 10.1 billion U.S. dollars, with equipment investment reaching as high as 8.6 billion U.S. dollars.
The project is planned for construction from 2026 to 2028, with commercial production in the first quarter of 2029.
According to industry media reports, Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. won the bid for core equipment for a 10GW wafer production line, including 210mm single-crystal furnaces, quartz crucibles, and slicing equipment, with delivery expected to be completed in Q3.
Tesla Motors's construction schedule waits for no one.
It plans to procure a total of about 2.9 billion U.S. dollars worth of photovoltaic manufacturing equipment from China, and some categories require export approval from China's Ministry of Commerce.
On the Chinese side, since 2026 there have been multiple policy discussions on export controls for photovoltaic equipment, and authorities including the State Administration for Market Regulation have carried out price compliance guidance for the photovoltaic industry, with personnel from market regulators in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and other places participating.
Whether the equipment can leave the country on time is itself a variable.
Now a U.S. court patent lawsuit has been layered on top. If Liancheng Numerical Control's request for a permanent injunction is granted, Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd.'s equipment could theoretically be blocked at U.S. customs.
Of course, from case filing to an injunction ruling, there lie lengthy procedures such as evidence discovery, Markman hearings, and summary judgment.
But what supply chain management fears most is not bad news; it is uncertainty.
Tesla Motors's procurement team now faces not only "when will the equipment arrive," but "can the equipment arrive at all."
That question mark is enough to keep any factory project manager awake at night.
It is worth noting that Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. has never正面 confirmed the order with Tesla Motors in multiple investor exchanges, and according to public interaction records, the company has never formally announced the signing of a formal contract.
In other words, the capital market has fully priced in the expectation of the "3 billion yuan order," but the certainty at the legal document level may be far lower than the market imagines.
The emergence of the lawsuit has precisely pushed this information asymmetry into the foreground.
For Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd., the most realistic threat from this lawsuit may not be how much the court orders it to pay, but whether Tesla Motors's procurement department will reassess the risk exposure of a "single supplier" after seeing news of the lawsuit.
Liancheng Numerical Control chose to file in a U.S. court rather than a Chinese court, indicating that it understands it cannot directly compete with Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. in commercial competition.
Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. has a global single-crystal furnace market share of more than 60%, while Liancheng Numerical Control has about 18%.
In a head-on price war or a contest of delivery speed, Liancheng Numerical Control does not have much chance of winning.
But on a different battlefield, in a U.S. court, the foundational patents accumulated from the Kayex era, which Liancheng Numerical Control acquired in 2013 for 9.9 million U.S. dollars when it bought Kayex's single-crystal furnace business and obtained related intellectual property licensing and 18 patented technologies, become one of the few levers capable of shifting the landscape.
The reality, however, is that Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd.'s 3 billion yuan order will not disappear because of a lawsuit.
If Tesla Motors abandons Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. because of the lawsuit, it will not find a replacement of the same scale and delivery capability in the short term.
Even if Liancheng Numerical Control wins the case, it may not necessarily take over smoothly. Although its Vietnam subsidiary already has the capacity to produce nearly one hundred complete single-crystal furnaces per month, whether it can fully match the equipment demand of a 10GW-class wafer production line remains unknown.
The most likely final outcome is that the litigation continues for one to two years, both sides gradually reveal their cards during the evidence discovery stage, and Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanical & Electrical Co., Ltd. either settles by paying patent licensing fees or makes a design-around technically.
Tesla Motors's equipment delivery will not be interrupted because of this, but everyone in the supply chain will remember: your competitor can, at your most critical delivery window, use a single complaint to make your customer reconsider your reliability.
The cost of this lesson is far more than legal fees.
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