Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), China’s and the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) battery maker , has nearly tripled its patents lawsuit against smaller competitor China Lithium Battery Technology (CALB) to 510 million yuan (US$76.5 million). CATL on Monday raised the damages it said were caused by CALB’s infringement upon its intellectual property by 176 per cent from the previous 185 million yuan claim it brought against the smaller firm in a court in Fuzhou, the capital of China’s eastern Fujian province, in July 2021. CATL did not disclose any further details about the lawsuit, and it is not known which patents are involved in the case. A source with knowledge of the matter said the two firms were still embroiled in a dispute over jurisdiction. The legal dispute between CATL and CALB, mainland China’s third-largest EV battery maker, could have far-reaching implications for the world’s largest EV market amid Beijing’s ambition of turning China into a global leader in the automobiles sector. Tesla’s supplier CATL suffers another market rout on accounts delay, costs “The EV industry cannot flourish unless a complete supply chain is created,” said Gao Shen, an independent analyst in Shanghai. “Core technologies in battery, a key component in EVs, are important. Therefore, the lawsuit has already attracted the attention of industry officials.” State-owned CALB, which is based in Changzhou, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, could not be reached for comment on Monday. CATL, a major battery supplier of Tesla’s, said in July last year that CALB had used its new technology in batteries that were installed in tens of thousands of vehicles. CALB, which supplies batteries to China’s state-owned carmaker GAC, said in a statement at that time that it had an independent research team that developed its own battery technology. The batteries it produced for customers passed assessments to make sure they do not breach other firms’ intellectual property rights, the company said. The increase in the size of CATL’s lawsuit comes against a backdrop of Covid-19 devastating China’s once buoyant EV sector. Lockdowns in Shanghai and Jilin province, a major automobiles production base, have disrupted supply chains and kept consumers from buying cars. Mainland China’s vehicle manufacturers lost 1 million vehicles in production last month amid the lockdowns, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai lost about 50,000 units in production as it idled assembly from March 28 to April 18. There was a shortfall in the battery sector too. About 13.3 gigawatt-hour (GWh) worth of EV batteries were installed in April, a decline of 38 per cent from a month earlier, according to China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance data. As of last month, CATL had a 38.3 per cent share of the market, while CALB had a 6.8 per cent share.