Not looking good for The Medicines Company; Angiomax

TopNews reported on The Medicines Company:

On March 19, 2010, the United States Patent and Trademark Office once again ended up denying the firm's request to extend the life of the patent it currently holds, that protects its foremost medicine, the blood thinner Angiomax.

Since 2001, Medicines has been unsuccessfully trying to undo an error, that happened when it marginally missed a 60-day deadline in placing a request for the patent extension. As the patent office refused to accept a late application, the patent is now scheduled to expire on the coming Tuesday [March 23], instead of in late 2014, as it was originally suppose to be.

The USPTO seemingly ignored the intent of a court order of March 16: "Claude M. Hilton of the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., ordered the office to ensure that the patent is still in force while it is conducting its reconsideration." The trick was that reconsideration was rather quick [March 16 to March 19]. Now, if the USPTO could handle patent applications that quickly!

See prior IPBiz post:


Lobbying efforts over Angiomax patent extension