Cold Chain Packaging Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
A patent landscape review of cold chain packaging: filing trends since 2015, IPC technology composition, leading assignees, most-cited records and where claim space is still open.
Filing growth = 2021 (20 records) → 2024 (1); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 108 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What the cold chain packaging patent record shows
Cold chain packaging covers the insulated containers, phase-change materials, layered composites and monitoring systems used to keep temperature-sensitive goods — vaccines, food, biologics — stable in transit. The 108 records in scope span 2015 through the current data cut-off and sit almost entirely inside B65D (containers and packaging), with a meaningful secondary cluster in F25D (refrigeration) and smaller overlaps into laminates, wrapping, and even data-processing classes tied to shipment tracking. That spread signals a field defined less by a single breakthrough material and more by combinations — insulation plus structure plus, increasingly, connected monitoring.
Filing rose steadily through the late 2010s, peaked in 2020, and has declined since — a pattern consistent with a wave of pandemic-era vaccine-logistics filings that has not been sustained at the same volume. The assignee base is fragmented: no company holds more than a small fraction of the 108 records, and a long tail of single-filing entrants — many of them regional Chinese manufacturers and individual inventors — makes up the bulk of the ranking.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 108-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend: a 2020 peak, then a sharp pullback
Filings climbed from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 31 in 2020, then dropped substantially — 2021's 20 filings fell to just 1 by 2024, a 95% decline over that span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation the field has gone quiet.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
IPC composition: packaging dominates, refrigeration is the largest adjacent class
B65D (containers and packaging) appears in 93.5% of the 108 records, effectively defining the field. F25D (refrigeration) at 19.4% is the largest adjacent class, followed by layered products (B32B, 9.3%) and packaging/wrapping (B65B, 8.3%). Smaller shares in G06Q and H04L point to a minority of filings that pair physical packaging with tracking or commerce logic — still a small slice, but distinct from the core insulation-and-structure claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 108 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cold Chain Packaging Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cold chain packaging patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US20130031874A1 — Cold chain packaging (Monterey Bay Associates, 2013-02-07)
A method of making a cold chain package, includes, providing corresponding rolls of dissimilar insulating packaging material; forming separate panels from sheets of dissimilar insulating packaging material provided by the corresponding rolls; enclosing the panels in a membrane, the membrane defining a hinge between the panels that are adjacent to each other; and folding the panels along each hinge to form a box-shaped chamber.This filing sits ahead of the 2020 peak and establishes a foundational claim structure — dissimilar insulating panels joined by a membrane hinge into a folding box — that later filings in the space have had to design around rather than repeat.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2015153607A1 | Thermally regulated system | 56 |
| 2 | US11078008B2 | Cold chain packaging | 13 |
| 3 | US20190329962A1 | Cold Chain Packaging | 12 |
| 4 | US20170158411A1 | Returnable Cold Chain Packaging Composite | 12 |
| 5 | US20130031874A1 | Cold chain packaging | 11 |
| 6 | CN109178690A | 一种装载空间可调的智能冷链集装器 | 10 |
| 7 | CN212125936U | 一种温度可调的生鲜用冷链包装箱 | 9 |
| 8 | WO2016008057A1 | Returnable cold chain packaging composite | 7 |
| 9 | CA3033213A1 | Smart package | 6 |
| 10 | KR1020210135934A | System for managing logistics based on delivery base for providing resource circulation and customized servic… | 5 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings — treat them as a signal of prior-art density, not current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →Reading the concentration and the gaps
The numbers describe a field that is active but not consolidated — useful context before deciding where to file or who to watch.
No single company controls the claim space
The leading assignee holds 8 of 108 records; combined, the top 5 account for 29.6% of all records in scope and the top 10 for 43.5%. That leaves more than half the field to a long tail of single- or double-filing entrants, many of them regional manufacturers.
A sharp pullback from the 2020 peak
Filing activity peaked at 31 records in 2020, then fell steeply — 20 filings in 2021 down to 1 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years understate true activity, but the direction through 2024 is unambiguous.
China dominates receiving-office activity
China accounts for 65 of the 108 records, roughly six times South Korea's count and nearly six times the United States'. WIPO/PCT filings (8) and UK/Canada filings (5 combined) make up a small internationally-routed minority.
Refrigeration is the largest adjacent claim area
Nearly all records touch B65D packaging claims, but a fifth also carry F25D refrigeration classification — the clearest sign that active-cooling integration, not just passive insulation, is a live design axis in current filings.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cold chain packaging patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking, or identifying open claim space.
Map claims against the 2013 foundational filing
Before drafting new insulation-panel or hinge-fold claims, check them against the structure established in the representative 2013 filing and its citing family to avoid overlapping prior art.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Track the fragmented assignee base over time
With no assignee holding more than a small share of the 108 records, ongoing monitoring of new entrants — particularly regional manufacturers — matters more here than watching a single incumbent.
Set up assignee tracking in Patsnap Eureka →Watch the refrigeration and monitoring overlap
The F25D and G06Q/H04L overlaps suggest active-cooling and connected-monitoring claims are still a minority position. Combination claims here may face less-dense prior art than core insulation structures.
Analyse white space in Patsnap Eureka →Common questions on the cold chain packaging patent landscape
No single company dominates this field. The leading assignee holds 8 of the 108 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees combined account for 29.6% of all records — a modest concentration by patent-landscape standards. The remaining assignee base, 80 companies in the ranking, is a long tail of entities with one or two filings each, including a large number of regional Chinese manufacturers and individual inventors. This fragmentation means competitive tracking has to watch many small filers rather than a handful of incumbents.
Filing activity rose through the late 2010s, peaked at 31 records in 2020, and then declined sharply — from 20 records in 2021 to just 1 in 2024, a 95% drop over that span. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as proof the field has stalled. The safest reading is that the pandemic-era filing wave, likely tied to vaccine logistics, has not been sustained at the same intensity through 2024.
The field is defined almost entirely by B65D, containers and packaging, which appears in 93.5% of the 108 records. The largest adjacent area is F25D, refrigeration, present in 19.4% of records, indicating that a meaningful minority of filings integrate active cooling rather than relying on passive insulation alone. Smaller shares touch layered materials (B32B), wrapping processes (B65B), and connected tracking or commerce logic (G06Q, H04L), pointing to smart-packaging integration as an emerging but still minor claim direction.
China's receiving office accounts for 65 of the 108 records in scope, far ahead of South Korea (12) and the United States (11). WIPO/PCT filings add 8 more internationally-routed applications, with the United Kingdom and Canada contributing smaller counts. This distribution suggests that most activity is domestically filed in China rather than routed through international PCT channels, which is worth factoring into any freedom-to-operate search strategy focused on this technology.
The most-cited record, WO2015153607A1, is titled 'Thermally regulated system' and carries 56 citations within the searched corpus, well ahead of the next tier of cited records. High citation counts in a fixed corpus tend to favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited, so this should be read as a signal of foundational influence rather than current market relevance. Filings like US20130031874A1, an earlier record from Monterey Bay Associates on folding insulated panels, also show sustained citation and are worth reviewing when assessing prior art for new structural claims.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.