Reinvestigation of the condensation of 2-hydrazinobenzothiazole with ethyl acetoacetate

The reaction of 2-hydrazinobenzothiazole (1) with ethyl acetoacetate has twice been reported to yield a fused triazepinobenzothiazolone, namely, 3-methyl[1,2,4]triazepino[3,4-b]benzothiazol-5(4H)-one (4). We have repeated this work and reassigned the reaction product as 2-(2-benzothiazolyl)-1,2-dihydro-5-methyl-3H-pyrazol-3-one (5) on the basis of X-ray crystallography.