Aptean GenomeQuest Marks a Major Milestone

Question: What has grown to be so large that you’d spend more than a decade of your life counting its individual elements one-by-one?

Answer: The Aptean GenomeQuest intellectual property sequence database, GQ-Pat. It already boasted the largest collection of IP sequences in the world before it passed a big milestone in mid-October, reaching more than 400 million sequences. If you counted one sequence per second, it would take you more than 12 years to finish.

The reason why GenomeQuest is the market leader in patent sequence search has surprisingly little to do with our user-friendly search interface or our stellar customer support, though those certainly are important. It is the content found only in our GQ-Pat database that makes the real difference. As our guest blogger Stephen Tedeschi once pointed out:

“Historically, patent data has been an overlooked source of information that is absolutely crucial to fully understanding the state-of-the-art. Therefore, there is a vast amount of information that is not even being considered early in the innovation lifecycle. It’s only when considering applying for a patent that patent data is investigated and by that point it’s too late.”

Aptean’s customers use GQ-Pat to avoid that mistake. They research nucleic acid and protein sequences to discover what’s known about a specific protein and what others have tried to create. They also look for patent information:

• Has someone already patented this protein?

• Do I have FTO (freedom to operate)?

• Is there prior art (publications already in existence) that would prevent me from getting a patent?

• Is my competitor’s patent valid?  Is MY patent valid?

GQ-Pat users are scientists, professional IP searchers, patent agents, and attorneys. They are highly knowledgeable about basic science as well as patent law, and a successful product has to satisfy all their needs. Many of the sequences in the GQ-Pat database aren’t available anywhere else. We obtain some through automated datafeeds followed by parsing (programmatic reformatting); our manual curators hand-enter others. Covering 70 different patent authorities, GQ-Pat is updated twice a week, ensuring that the database includes the most thorough, accurate, and up-to-date IP sequence data available.

We see ourselves as stewards of the state-of-the-art and we are committed to that identity. Why? Because the people who work on GenomeQuest (and its sister product, LifeQuest) believe in the fundamental ability of science to improve human life. The industry-leading GQ-Pat database is one very tangible expression of that mission.