US Patent Issued to Imperial Tobacco on Sept. 1 for "Smoking substitute system" (British Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,721,377, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to Imperial Tobacco Ltd. (Bristol, Great Britain).

"Smoking substitute system" was invented by Kate Ferrie (Liverpool, Great Britain), Ross Shenton (Liverpool, Great Britain), Mohammed Benyezzar (Liverpool, Great Britain) and Chris Lord (Liverpool, Great Britain).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed is a system having a smoking substitute device for heating a consumable according to a consumable cycle. The smoking substitute device comprises a measurement means for measuring a usage of the device by a user during the consumable cycle, and a controller configured to determine an exhaustion level...