KEGG Licensing FAQ

(1) About the new End User License Agreement (EULA)

(1-1) What are the differences between previous and current licenses?

The most significant change is that the use of KEGG web service can be optionally included because Pathway Solutions now operates a KEGG mirror website. This and other changes are summarized below.

	Previous	Current
Contract unit	Site	Legal entity
Access methods	FTP only	FTP only or FTP+Web
Use of third party software	Not allowed unless software is developed by an authorized KEGG service provider (both academic and commercial)	Not specified
Outsourcing and/or cloud data storage	Not specified meaning that it is not allowed due to the internal use only provision of KEGG data	Allowed with a prior written consent of Pathway
Use of KEGG web service	Not allowed	Allowed through Pathway's mirror site

(1-2) I thought the previous license allowed the use of KEGG web services

No, that is not true.
The KEGG website www.kegg.jp and the GenomeNet mirror site www.genome.jp are operated by Kyoto University Bioinformatics Center. These sites are made freely available following the guideline of Kanehisa Laboratories, which makes a request of academic use only but does not enforce any restriction. The new KEGG mirror site operated by Pathway Solutions, which is identical to the GenomeNet mirror site, enables commercial use of KEGG web services with a proper license agreement.

(1-3) Are there any additional data that can be obtained from the web?

No, that is not the case.
EULA grants permission to download and use KEGG FTP Data for business purposes. The KEGG website contains data other than KEGG FTP Data, such as Japanese drug labels originated from JAPIC, which are outside of EULA. The web service is meant for browsing data and not for obtaining data. There has never been and never will be an idea of defining which data are permitted through the website.

(1-4) Then what is the merit of the web option?

There are at least two merits of the web option. One is to authorize the commercial user's access to the KEGG web service by starting with Pathway's mirror site. This mirror site is equivalent to the GenomeNet mirror site and linked to the services that exist only in the KEGG main server, such as KEGG MEDICUS. Note, however, that the KEGG web service is limited to www.kegg.jp and does not include KEGG API served in the subdomain of rest.kegg.jp. The other is to enable usage of KEGG Mapper and other analysis tools on the mirror site. Needless to say, commercial use of such tools on the Kyoto University site is prohibited.

(2) About the new Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA)

(2-1) What is new in the new license?

Similar to the previous end user license, the previous business license allows only the access to the KEGG FTP site. Licensees were expected to develop their own analysis tools to use KEGG FTP data. The new service provider license allows the access to the KEGG mirror website and use the analysis tools developed by Kanehisa Laboratories.