Delhi High Court Dismisses ITC Challenge To Philip Morris Heat-Not-Burn Cigarette Patent

Justice Jyoti Singh passed the judgment, ruling against ITC on both a writ petition and a separate appeal.

Philip Morris holds a patent for a "heated aerosol generating article." This covers a cigarette-like device that heats tobacco to release vapour instead of burning it like a regular cigarette.

The patent was granted in December 2021 and runs until 2034.

ITC opposed the patent after it was granted, arguing it wasn't a genuine invention. It said the technology wasn't new, and that it was an obvious step for anyone skilled in the field, not something inventive enough to deserve patent protection.

To back this up, ITC relied on ten older patent documents describing earlier smoking and vaping devices, arguing Philip Morris's invention lacked novelty.

The Controller of Patents rejected ITC's opposition in January 2026. The Controller also dismissed two separate applications ITC had filed during the proceedings. One objected to Philip Morris trying to amend its patent claims late in the process. The other objected to a fresh written submission by Philip Morris, which ITC said introduced new arguments it never got a chance to respond to.

ITC challenged all of this before the High Court, filing both a writ petition over the two dismissed applications and a formal appeal against the rejection of its opposition.

On the appeal itself, the dispute was over whether the patent was novel and inventive.

The court went through each of ITC's cited prior documents one by one and found none of them matched what Philip Morris had actually patented.

Most of the older documents dealt with regular cigarettes that still involved some burning, even if reduced, while Philip Morris's device involved no burning at all, just heating.

The court noted that a metal foil and a metal-paper laminate behave quite differently when heated, a distinction that mattered a lot given the invention was all about controlling heat precisely without triggering combustion.

None of the older patents, the court found, taught this specific combination of a pure metal foil wrap paired with a gathered sheet of tobacco.

The court also upheld the Controller's earlier decision to exclude four of ITC's ten prior art documents, since they were filed too late under the applicable procedural rules.

Finding the patent genuinely inventive and properly granted, the court dismissed both the writ petition and the appeal.

For ITC: Senior Advocate J. Sai Deepak with Advocates Amrita Majumdar, Samik Mukherjee, Kritika Kaur and Avinash K. Sharma

For Philip Morris: Advocates Sanjeev Tiwari, Manish Aryan, Nishant Rai and Yojana Sonkvsare

For Registrar: CGSC Nidhi Raman with Advocates Om Ram and Nikita Singh