In February 2001, lawyers representing Medicines failed to file a timely extension which might have pushed patent expiration from 2010 to 2014. Current statutory regulations require a filing within 60 days of FDA approval, without exception.

The company has projected that Angiomax could generate over $1/2 billion in domestic sales to 2010.

The Republican House of Representatives passed a helpful bill giving the USPTO statutory discretion in such instances, but the lazy bastards in the Senate packed up and left town without considering it. Medicines hopes to bribe enough folks in the new Congress to get the dirty deed done in the next session. But special interest groups, like the Council of Citizens Against Government Waste, oppose the bill, nicknaming it the "Dog Ate My Homework Act." They claim it could upset the tummy of the Hatch-Waxman Act, notorious for its sensitive digestive tract.

Medicines refuses to identify the negligent law firm.