The State Agency on Intellectual Property announces that the new WIPO Standard ST.26 will be used in the procedure of filing patent applications for invention in which DNA, RNA or amino acid sequence listings are disclosed.

The new standard applies to international applications filed on or after 1 July 2022. From the same date, Member States also apply this standard to national patent applications.

The WIPO standard does not apply to European and international applications filed before 1 July 2022, including corrections, rectifications, amendments or translations since entry into the European phase and any sequence listing, even those submitted after that date. These applications must still comply with WIPO Standard ST.25.

The new standard is intended to harmonize sequence listing practices across all patent offices, reflect advances in biotechnology, and meet international sequence database requirements. It will provide structured data, and patent offices and applicants alike will benefit from automatic validation and improved search capabilities.

The previous standard, which had not been updated since 2009, was failing to capture some of the growing sequence listing types and thus no longer met the current requirements of public sequence databases.

Applicants can use the new software, WIPO Sequence, to compile their sequence listings. The program will generate XML files in accordance with WIPO ST.26.

The WIPO Sequence is available for download at the following address: https://www.wipo.int/standards/en/sequence/index.html