Patent work sets Philip Morris apart

Philip Morris is far and away the leader among cigarette companies when it comes to research and development. In the past two years, the company has applied for more than 70 patents, a Richmond Times-Dispatch review found.

Reynolds American, the No. 2 cigarette-maker, applied for two over that time -- one for a device that positions cigarettes coming off a forming machine so name brands can be printed on them, and the other for a method of wrapping cut tobacco with strips that are made from sheets of a tobacco, glycerin and wood-pulp mixture.

Other cigarette-makers haven't bothered at all, except for a handful of patent applications filed by Japan Tobacco, mainly involving packaging.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco filed two applications, one for a new mixture and the other involving the use of enzymes to cure tobacco.

Petersburg-based Star Scientific has cut back its research efforts as it continues its patent-infringement lawsuit against Reynolds American. The suit involves a technique for curing tobacco that reduces nitrosamines, one of the families of carcinogenic compounds in tobacco.

Meanwhile, one kind of tobacco research has completely disappeared.

For decades, in addition to the companies' own research -- which included investigations into marketing and into additives that enhance flavor and nicotine delivery -- tobacco companies united to finance health research that many critics said produced little more than propaganda.

As part of the Master Settlement Agreement 10 years ago, the Tobacco Institute, the Council for Tobacco Research and the Council for Indoor Air Research agreed to disband those efforts.

A key element of the pressure that led to the settlement was public outrage over documents uncovered in lawsuits. They showed that tobacco companies and associations had covered up what their research found about the risks of smoking, as well as their efforts to lure young people to start smoking. -- David Ress