In a notice published last month in the Federal Register (81 Fed. Reg. 74775), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has requested comments from the public on WIPO Standard ST.26, a new standard for the presentation of nucleotide and/or amino acid sequences in patent applications.  The new standard was adopted by the Committee on WIPO Standards (CWS) in March and would replace the old WIPO Standard ST.25, which was originally adopted by the USPTO in July of 1998.

WIPO Standard ST.26 arose out of an effort that began in October 2010, when the CWS established a task force, with the European Patent Organisation as the lead, to draft a revised standard for filing nucleotide and/or amino acid sequence listings in XML format.  The new standard is composed of six documents: the main body of the standard, a first annex setting forth the controlled vocabulary for use with the sequence part of the standard, a second annex setting forth the Document Type Definition (DTD) for the standard, a third annex containing a sequence listing specimen, a fourth annex setting forth the character subset from the Unicode Basic Latin Code Table, and a fifth annex setting forth additional data exchange requirements for patent offices.  A proposed sixth annex would provide a guidance document for applicants and national and regional patent offices.  The USPTO has made all of the documents available here.

The Office is requesting comments from the public regarding any of the new standard's documents, and in particular, is seeking comments on the comprehensiveness and clarity of WIPO Standard ST.26 and the proposed guidance document annex, as well as comments regarding the proposed authoring/validation tool for creation of a sequence listing in XML.  The Office's notice indicates that the "[a]vailability of an authoring tool in advance of the WIPO Standard ST.26 effective date is key to a successful transition from WIPO Standard ST.25," noting that direct conversion from one standard to the other is not possible due to numerous differences between the two standards.  The notice also points out that a sequence listing generated in the WIPO Standard ST.26 XML format is not as easily readable as a sequence listing generated in its ST.25 counterpart, which will make the authoring tool even more important to the success of transitioning from the old standard to the new standard.

Comments on WIPO Standard ST.26 can be submitted by e-mail to:  seq_listing_xml@uspto.gov, or by regular mail to:  Mail Stop Comments—Patents, Commissioner for Patents, P.O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313–1450, marked to the attention of Susan C. Wolski, Office of International Patent Legal Administration, Office of the Deputy Commissioner for International Patent Cooperation.  Comments must be received by the Office by December 27, 2016 to be considered.