Paul Frohman smokes an electronic cigarette outside an office building in downtown Los Angeles.

A ruling handed down on Friday by the Commonwealth Court is a huge win for the e-cigarette industry, which is no longer required to pay a steep tax for the devices’ components.

Bob Oesterling, owner of Kingdom Vapor in Oakland Township, brought the suit before the court with a claim that the state Department of Revenue misinterpreted the state Tobacco Products Tax Act language when a 40-percent tax was imposed on all components of an e-cigarette on Dec. 1, 2016.

The e-cigarettes, commonly referred to as “vapes,” allow users to simulate smoking by inhaling a vapor created by special flavored liquid heated by a coil in the device.

Users can buy coils, batteries, tanks and other components for their vapes, which have been taxed 40 percent since the Department of Revenue’s tax went into effect.

Oesterling said Kingdom Vapors is a wholesale operation that he and his sons, Ben and Zach Oesterling, have run since September in the former Oakland Township Elementary School.

“I think it will be big improvement for the industry overall in Pennsylvania,” Bob Oesterling said on Monday.

Read more about this case in Tuesday's Butler Eagle.