CHARLOTTE (LN) — A federal judge in the Western District of North Carolina enjoined Jones Sustainable Packaging from making, offering for sale, selling, using, or advertising its redesigned cold-chain shipping container, finding that Yukon Packaging is likely to prevail on its claim that the new product infringes Patent No. 12,595,110, a utility patent issued just weeks before Yukon filed its second injunction motion.
The ruling is the second time the court has blocked Jones litigation. In April 2025, the court entered a preliminary injunction against Jones's original three-piece insulated container. Jones responded by introducing the so-called Accused Hinge-Break Product, which it said was "specifically designed... to not infringe Yukon's patents." The new injunction covers that redesign as well, and extends to Jones Nonwovens and the Jones Family of Companies, Inc.
The central dispute turned on a single claim element — what the patent calls claim element [1f] — and specifically on whether the word "configured" "during the cutting step, the first insulated pad is configured to be positioned inside a rigid container" required the pads to be physically placed inside a container during the cutting step itself. Jones argued it did; Yukon argued "configured" simply means "made."
The court sided with Yukon, parsing the claim's two temporal markers. The phrase "during" describes what happens as part of the cutting step, the court found, while "to be" refers to something that will happen afterward. A plain way of restating the claim, the court wrote, is that during the cutting step, the pad is made so that it may be positioned inside a rigid container. The court also rejected Jones's reliance on the patent examiner's reasons for allowance, noting that the examiner's language itself inverted the temporal elements and that an applicant is not precluded from taking a position contrary to the examiner's statements during litigation.
On validity, Jones pointed to four prior art references and argued that claims 1 and 2 of the '110 Patent would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill. The court was unpersuaded, finding that Jones offered only a single paragraph of conclusory argument and failed to articulate why a skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the references. The court also noted that one of the references Jones cited, identified as Vezina, actually teaches away of cotton fiber, further undercutting the motivation-to-combine theory.
The irreparable-harm findings were stark. Yukon and Jones compete in what the court described as a two-player market for three-piece cold-chain containers. According to Yukon's filings, after Jones began selling the hinge-break product, Veritiv — Yukon's primary distributor customer — lost its contract with a health care company identified only as Customer 1, and by January 2026 Yukon had lost all of Customer 1's business for three-piece cold-chain insulation, which had accounted for the majority of Yukon's total 2025 revenue. Yukon has since cut its workforce by more than 50% and scaled back operations at its distribution centers. At least one prospective customer has already requested pricing significantly below what Yukon had previously offered, signaling price erosion the court found likely to continue absent an injunction.
Jones argued that Yukon could not rely on harm that predated the April 7, 2026 patent issuance to establish a causal nexus. The court disagreed, citing Federal Circuit authority holding that pre-issuance harm is " least, circumstantial evidence demonstrating the possibility of identical harms once the patent issues." The court also credited a sealed declaration dated April 23, 2026 — two weeks after the patent issued — detailing Yukon's ongoing financial deterioration.
Jones separately warned that its customer Taylor Corporation could face supply-chain disruptions if the injunction issued. The court found that concern manageable, noting that Yukon represented it had sufficient product on hand to prevent marketplace disruption and that Jones itself estimated Taylor would not deplete existing stock for up to three weeks.
Yukon must post a $10,000 bond as security under the injunction order.
The case is set to continue on the merits. According to Yukon's own filings, the company risks closing entirely if Jones is permitted to keep selling the hinge-break container while the litigation proceeds.