ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,628,874, issued on May 19, was assigned to Imperial Tobacco Ltd. (Bristol, Great Britain).
"Smoking substitute apparatus" was invented by Benjamin Illidge (Liverpool, Great Britain), Benjamin Astbury (Liverpool, Great Britain) and Nikhil Aggarwal (Liverpool, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A smoking substitute apparatus for generating an aerosol, comprising: an air inlet and an outlet; a passage extending between the air inlet and the outlet, air flowing in use along the passage for inhalation by a user drawing on the apparatus; and an aerosol generation chamber containing an aerosol generator being operable to generate an ae...