A comparative study of patent sequence databases

• Published in: World patent information 2008-12, Vol.30 (4), p.300-308
• Main Authors: Andree, Piet Jan, Harper, Mark F., Nauche, Stéphane, Poolman, Robert A., Shaw, Jo, Swinkels, Joop C., Wycherley, Sally
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biosequences; CAplus; EBI Fasta; EMBL-Bank; Full text databases; GenBank; GENESEQ; Patent Documentation Group; Patent sequences; PCTGEN; PDG; REGISTRY; Searching; Sequence databases; Sequence databases Sequence searching Biosequences Patent sequences GENESEQ REGISTRY CAplus PCTGEN GenBank EMBL-Bank EBI Fasta PDG Patent Documentation Group; Sequence searching
• ISSN: 0172-2190; 1874-690X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wpi.2008.04.005

Nucleic acid and protein sequence data from patent publications is available from a plurality of commercial and public sources. As the searching and analysis of this data is of crucial importance to the life sciences industry, the Patent Documentation Group’s Biotechnology Information Working Group conducted a study to critically compare and evaluate patent sequence databases for data content. A series of sequences were searched to find similar sequences from several well known sources: GENESEQ™, CAS REGISTRY/CAplus SM, PCTGEN, NCBI GenBank ®, EMBL-Bank and the EBI Fasta databases. The study highlights some differences between GENESEQ™ and REGISTRY/CAplus SM results within the context of indexing policy and patent coverage. In comparison to the proprietary databases, the authors have identified important deficiencies in the content of the public databanks. This paper also discusses database timeliness and the choice of algorithm as potential reasons for missing data.