Enlarge / Ben Chalker, who is in charge of manufacturing at Defense Distributed, shows a part of the blueprint on a computer at the Austin, Texas, factory on August 1, 2018. (credit: KELLY WEST/AFP/Getty Images)

A federal judge in Seattle has ruled against Defense Distributed, imposing a preliminary injunction requiring the company to keep its 3D-printed gun files offline for now.

US District Judge Robert Lasnik found in his Monday ruling that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed based on their argument that the Department of State, in allowing for a modification of federal export law, had unwittingly run afoul of a different law, the Administrative Procedure Act.

In essence, the judge found that because the Department of State did not formally notify Congress when it modified the United States Munitions List, the previous legal settlement that Defense Distributed struck with the Department of State—which allowed publication of the files—is invalid.