But if one could be had, you can bet Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific would be filing motions lickety-split to gain supremacy. The two device makers have been spending millions of dollars in court battles over stent patents these past few years and, in the process, possibly delaying the development of the market, at the expense of patients, according to a round-up piece in The New York Times.

The legal gyrations are so intense they are sometimes comical. Last month, for instance, J&J lawyers told a federal judge in Delaware that, because medical studies had linked J&J’s drug-coated Cypher stent to blood clots, it couldn’t have infringed a Boston Scientific patent. And the logic? Well, the lawyers argued that the Boston Scientific patent claimed the coating didn’t cause clots. In other words, as the Times noted, the J&J lawyers insisted the Cypher stent wasn’t covered by Boston Scientific’s patent because the device is a health hazard.

The legal battles are “a horrendous waste of money,” Julio Palmaz, a radiologist who invented one of the earliest stents more than two decades ago and has often been a witness in patent cases, tells the paper. “I see my life in three phases. The early years in the lab, the middle years on the road training physicians, and the last third in court.”

To get a quick sense of just how prolonged and complicated the litigation has become, take a look at the decade-long list of Boston Scientific lawsuits.