In early September, a federal jury ruled that Reynolds Vapor Co.'s Vuse Alto product had infringed on three Altria patents. As a result, a district court ordered Reynolds to pay $95.23 million to Altria. Reynolds has appealed for a retrial in that court.
Renault Atomizers stated in their request for a retrial that "Altria improperly injected incendiary evidence regarding patent infringement allegations against Renault in other cases, depriving Renault of a fair trial. The erroneous ruling also damaged Renault's ability to defend itself. Under the cumulative error theory, these errors independently impacted the judgment and thus require a complete new trial.
Tobacco company Altria stated that they consider the court ruling to be fair and that they are glad the jury correctly recognized that R.J. Reynolds had infringed on some of their patents. They also stated that there is no need for another trial.
The complaint involves three patents granted by the United States to Altria's customer service. The patents were based on an application from April 2015, according to the Patent and Trademark Office.
Altria claimed that Reynolds' vaporizer infringed on Altria's patent for the pod component used in Vuse Alto.
Renault believes that Altria's lawsuit is in retaliation for Renault's patent infringement complaint filed in April 2020, which involved six Reynolds patents and alleged that Philip Morris International's IQOS tobacco heating device infringed on them. Altria was the exclusive distributor of IQOS in the United States until recently.
On September 29, 2021, the United States International Trade Commission upheld a preliminary decision made in May 2021, ruling that the IQOS device produced by Philip Morris International infringes on two patents owned by rival company Renault. As a result of this decision, the Altria Group is prohibited from importing IQOS products into the United States.
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