ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,295,402, issued on May 13, was assigned to Philip Morris USA Inc. (Richmond, Va.).
"Controlled release mentholated tobacco beads" was invented by Georgios D. Karles (Richmond, Va.), Shuzhong Zhuang (Glen Allen, Va.) and Yi Zeng (Richmond, Va.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Encapsulated tobacco beads and processes of making the encapsulated tobacco beads are disclosed. According to an embodiment, a process of making encapsulated tobacco beads comprises mixing tobacco particles and menthol in an aqueous solution to form a wet mass; extruding the wet mass to form extrudates; spheronizing the extrudates to form tobacco beads; drying the toba...