Update on SIPO Sequence Database
Although the establishment of a gene sequence database was listed as one of the targets the "Tenth Five-year Plan", the Chinese Patent Office (the State Intellectual Property Office, or SIPO) has not yet provided a searchable database for patented biological sequences. However, since 1 November 2001, patent applicants claiming nucleotide or amino acid sequences have been required to provide sequence listings in a computer-readable format (on a floppy disk or CD), in addition to a hard copy of the sequence listing. Currently the sequence listings that are filed with Chinese patent applications are only available for internal use by SIPO.
NASDAP Patent Sequence Database
Recently, two scientists published a paper claiming that they had created the first biological sequence database of Chinese patents, and that the database was searchable by a BLAST interface.
Link to publication: Yang L and Xu L L, (2006) Construction of the National Bio-Sequence Database of Chinese Patent, Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics 33 (8): 800-803 (publication in Chinese)
When the paper was published (August 21, 2006), the database (called NASDAP) included 139,574 patented biological sequences from 8,746 published applications and granted Chinese patents spanning from 1999 to February of 2006. Among these documents, 4,606 were filed by non-Chinese applicants. The authors claim that the database includes genes, microarrays, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and motifs.
While the authors state that their sequence searching web site (http://nasdap.generank.org) is free, it is currently unavailable to users outside of China.
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