Patent column from DDBJ

3. Flat File structure for Japan Patent Office (JPO) -First part-

Hideo Aono
DDBJ Patent Annotator

Introduction
I introduced about patent data of Japan Patent Office (JPO) in first column and Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) in second column. In this time, I would like to explain about Flat File (FF) structure for JPO nucleotide and amino acid sequence data as two parts. I will introduce about JPO data property, summary of FF structure and relationship between patent application contents and description part on FF in first part.

1. Property of JPO data FF
JPO data FF has fundamental application information of patent publication compared with FF for United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO). Because JPO makes the submission file (Fig. 1) containing application information based on WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) ST 25 format submitted from applicants. Thereafter, DDBJ makes FF reflected almost contents of JPO submission file (Fig. 2).

Fig.1 Example of JPO submission file

2. FF structure and description contents
I showed FF structure for nucleotide sequence data dividing by six parts (LOCUS Block, SOURCE Block, REFERENCE Block, COMMENT Block, Feature Block and Sequence Block) as different color with sample data and description contents in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 Correspondence relation of JPO nucleotide sequence data

Each Block name of symbol alphabet is as follows;
[A] LOCUS Block, [B] SOURCE Block, [C] REFERENCE Block, [D] COMMENT Block, [E] Feature Block, [F] Sequence Block

3. Patent application contents on FF
I showed correspondence relationship between patent application contents and description parts on JPO FF (Table. 1).

Table. 1 Application contents and description parts on JPO FF

Contents of patent application	Describing line on JPO FF
Publication number	DEFINITION line [A], KEYWORDS line [A], JOURNAL line [C], PN line [D]
Publication date	JOURNAL line [C] , PD line [D]
Application number	PF line [D]
Application date	PF line [D]
Applicants	JOURNAL line [C]
Inventors	AUTHORS line [C], PI line [D]
Invention title	DEFINITION line [A], TITLE line [C]
Priority application number	PR line [D]
Priority date	PR line [D]
Feature information	FT line [D]
Organism name (JPO submission file)	OS line [D]
Organism name (converted name in DDBJ)	SOURCE line [B], ORGANISM line [B], /organism qualifier [E]

* Alphabet symbol after line name is corresponding to FF Block part in Fig. 2.

Patent application information is described mainly at [C] REFERENCE Block and [D] COMMENT Block. Amino acid sequence data is also described on same Blocks. Invention title is set on both DEFINITION line of [A] LOCUS Bloc and TITLE line of [C] REFERENCE Block.
In specially, applicants name is only set JOURNAL line on [C] REFERENCE Block (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 [C] REFERENCE Block

Author comments
At second part, I will explain each line description of six Blocks in detail. Moreover, I would like to introduce the conversion process of organism name from JPO submission file in DDBJ.