..Star Scientific Announces Notice of Allowance by US PTO Granting New Patent Claims Relating to Tobacco Curing Technology
......
GLEN ALLEN, Va., March 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Star Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ: CIGX - News) announced that the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a Notice of Allowance on February 16, 2012 in Application No. 12/342,192 by Jonnie Williams, entitled "Tobacco Curing Method", formally granting patent claims for a new method of curing tobacco. The written patent will issue from the USPTO within the next several months. The '192 application discloses the minimizing of TSNA (tobacco-specific nitrosamine) formation in tobacco by subjecting it to a controlled environment while a majority of the leaf is in a green, uncured state. The process, therefore, represents an improvement over the method described in the Williams '649 patent; Star Scientific believes it is particularly well-suited for curing tobacco for use in smokeless tobacco products.
"The significance of the decision by the USPTO to grant these novel claims cannot be overstated," said Paul L Perito, Esq, Chairman, President and Chief Operating Officer of Star Scientific. "The new tobacco curing technology developed by Mr. Williams now makes it possible to reduce the levels of a class of known carcinogenic toxins in cured tobacco to nearly undetectable levels. We believe that the 2009 Tobacco Control Act requirement that tobacco companies list the harmful constituents in their products, when implemented, may encourage those companies to reduce toxins where the technology for those reductions is available."
The Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA, as mandated by the 2009 Tobacco Act, is required to publish a list of harmful and potentially harmful compounds, and the levels of each compound by tobacco product brand offerings. The stated purpose of this initiative is to inform and educate the public about the range and scope of harmful and potentially harmful elements in tobacco products. The FDA in December 2011 published a request for comments on a study it is conducting to identify the most effective means of communicating this information to the public. Therefore, that list has not been finalized; however, TSNAs were unanimously identified by the Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Subcommittee for inclusion in the list at the beginning of this process. The company believes that when the list becomes public, it should allow adult tobacco users to identify differences in the toxin levels, including TSNAs, contained in various tobacco products. TSNAs were first identified approximately fifty years ago as one of the most lethal and abundant groups of toxins in tobacco leaf and smoke. |
