( June 11, 2024, 2:15 PM EDT) -- ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Two prior art patents dating to the mid-1990s and assigned to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (RJR) have doomed the tobacco titan’s latest effort to patent a “smoking article,” with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board on June 10 upholding an examiner’s rejection of 20 claims on grounds of obviousness....