A. About COSMIC and licensing
COSMIC is the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer and is a product developed and owned by Genome Research Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales (under company registration number 2742969) and registered as a charity (registration number 1021457), operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute, whose principal place of business is at Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, United Kingdom (“GRL”). GRL is willing to license COSMIC for use based on the Licence Terms & Conditions set out in Part B below.
New Registered Users
In order to use COSMIC, either for academic or commercial use, you must register for an account via https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic/register. For academic users this account will enable you to access, use, download and/or install all or any part of COSMIC. For commercial users this account will enable you to access and/or use all or any part of COSMIC with the exception of data downloads which will be provided from our commercial licensing partner QIAGEN’s portal. As part of registering for an account, GRL will require some information, such as a valid institutional or organisation email. This will be limited to information reasonably needed to identify you and your organisation. When you click on the “Submit” button, you indicate that you accept and agree to be bound by all of the following Licence Terms & Conditions, that you are duly authorised by your organisation to bind them to the Licence Terms & Conditions, and that no other terms proposed by you or your organisation apply. You also agree that these Licence Terms & Conditions are enforceable by GRL against you and your organisation, as if they were set out in a written negotiated agreement signed by you and your organisation.
For the avoidance of doubt, if you do not agree to the Licence Terms & Conditions, You may not access, use, download or install any part of COSMIC.
Existing Registered Users
If you are receiving these Licence Terms & Conditions as updated terms and conditions, your continued use of COSMIC shall be deemed acceptance of these Licence Terms & Conditions. These Licence Terms & Conditions shall supersede any previous terms and conditions issued by GRL. Unless stated otherwise, these Licence Terms & Conditions shall apply to all releases of COSMIC, including prior versions that you or your organisation may have downloaded or copied directly from any COSMIC website.
If you do not agree with these updated Licence Terms & Conditions, your licence to use COSMIC as a Registered User is hereby revoked and you and your organisation shall immediately:
- Discontinue all use of any part of COSMIC including any data downloads;
- Delete any copies of COSMIC in your possession;
- Delete your account.
For more information about our licensing model and for licensing enquiries contact us at cosmic@sanger.ac.uk or fill out a contact form at www.cosmickb.org/about/contact-us
B. Licence Terms & Conditions
1. Definitions
1.1 “Academic Use” means use for the purposes of its internal academic research by a company or organisation whose primary purpose is to serve a charitable, educational, scientific or literary purpose, otherwise known as a "not for-profit" company or organisation, and where such use is not Commercial Use.
1.2 “Commercial Use” means (i) use by a company or organisation whose primary purpose is to make money, otherwise known as a "for-profit" company or organisation; and (ii) use by a company or organisation whose primary purpose is to serve a charitable, educational, scientific or literary purpose, otherwise known as a "not-for-profit" company or organisation, but where such use relates to the provision of a product or service, including without limitation a product or service relating to the treatment of an individual’s health, wellbeing or any medical condition.
1.3 “Commercial Licence” means a licence granted by GRL’s commercial distribution partner QIAGEN allowing Licensee to Use COSMIC for Commercial Use.
1.4 “COSMIC” means any element of the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer.
1.5 “COSMIC Data Downloads” means elements of COSMIC data downloaded from any of the GRL Download Sites or the QDI Portal.
1.6 “COSMIC Web Platform” means the following online elements of COSMIC -
Elements which require registration.
Core COSMIC (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk)
Actionability (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/actionability)
Cell Lines (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cell_lines)
Cancer Gene Census (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/census)
Cancer Mutation Census (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cmc/home)
Sigprofiler Assignment (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/signatures/assignment)
Elements which do not require registration
COSMIC-3D (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic3d/)
Mutational Signatures (https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/signatures/)
1.7 “GRL Download Sites” means those sites and methods through which GRL allows downloading of elements of COSMIC for Academic Use.
1.8 “Licence Terms & Conditions” means the terms and conditions set out herein.
1.9 “Licensee” means the Registered User and their Organisation.
1.10 “Organisation” means the employer of the Registered User or the institution with which the Registered User is affiliated.
1.11 “Publication Enablement” has the meaning given to it in Clause 2.1.2.
1.12 “QDI Portal” means the QIAGEN Digital Insights portal operated by GRL’s commercial distribution partner QIAGEN at https://apps.ingenuity.com/ingsso/login which allows downloading of elements of COSMIC for Commercial Use.
1.13 “Registered User” means the individual who has registered for an account with GRL for use of COSMIC.
1.14 “Use COSMIC” means to access, use, download or install all or any part of COSMIC, including without limitation any COSMIC identifiers such as a mutation ID (COSV/COSM).
2. Permitted Use
2.1 Academic Use
2.1.1 Subject to acceptance of these Licence Terms & Conditions, Licensee is hereby granted a non‐exclusive, royalty free right to Use COSMIC for Academic Use. In connection with such Academic Use, Licensee may use COSMIC Data Downloads obtained from the GRL Download Sites.
2.1.2 Subject to acceptance of these Licence Terms & Conditions, Licensee is hereby granted a non‐exclusive, royalty free right to disclose data from COSMIC solely to the extent necessary to enable publication of Licensee’s scientific papers arising from its Academic Use of COSMIC under Clause 2.1.1 (“Publication Enablement”) provided that any such disclosure is accompanied with an acknowledgement of the use of COSMIC, including the specific release version number of each relevant part of COSMIC, as applicable. Except for Publication Enablement, Licensee may not transfer, grant access to, display, share or otherwise distribute COSMIC to any third party or on any free-to-access platform (including without limitation any public-facing website) in any form or manner without GRL’s express written consent.
2.2 Commercial Use
2.2.1 Licensee may only Use COSMIC for Commercial Use if Licensee has obtained and has in force a Commercial Licence, and Licensee’s Commercial Use of COSMIC shall be governed by the terms of that Commercial Licence. If Licensee has a Commercial Licence, any COSMIC Data Downloads Licensee is entitled to use must be obtained from the QDI Portal.
2.2.2 Illustrative examples of what constitutes Commercial Use of COSMIC are set out in Part C below.
3. Privacy Notice
3.1 Personal Data (as defined in the UK Data Protection Act 2018) will be used by GRL for the purpose of managing Licensee’s use of COSMIC. This may include, but will not be limited to, recording download activities for the purpose of product improvement.
3.2 Registered User agrees and acknowledges that any data including Personal Data that Registered User submits to GRL in respect of Registered User or their Organisation is accurate to the best of Registered User’s knowledge and that any changes in such data shall be promptly made known to GRL.
3.3 Registered Users have the right to ask for a copy of the Personal Data that GRL holds about them and their Organisation and for this purpose GRL may be contacted via email at dataprotection@sanger.ac.uk or at the postal address General Counsel, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, United Kingdom.
3.4 Additional Privacy Notice and Policy provisions apply and are incorporated in these Licence Terms & Conditions. The link can be found at www.cosmickb.org/privacy-policy
4. Registered User Acknowledgements and Agreements
4.1 Licensee shall Use COSMIC at its sole discretion and risk. Licensee shall be responsible for all data and information collected, collated and/or processed using COSMIC and shall be responsible for compliance with all and any statutory obligations relating thereto.
4.2 Licensee shall not modify, adapt, disassemble, reverse engineer, decompile, translate or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of software elements of COSMIC, or write or develop any derivative software or any other software program based on COSMIC software or confidential information provided by COSMIC or permit any of these things to happen except as allowed by applicable law.
4.3 If Licensee prints off, copies or downloads any part of COSMIC while in breach of these Licence Terms & Conditions, its right to Use COSMIC will cease immediately and it must destroy any copies of the materials it has made.
4.4 Licensee must not:
4.4.1 participate in any illegal, deceptive, misleading or unethical practices and activities which may be detrimental to COSMIC or GRL;
4.4.2 take any steps to avoid or defeat the purposes of any protection mechanisms contained within COSMIC, the COSMIC Web Platform, the Download Sites or associated websites or seek to circumvent any such protective mechanisms;
4.4.3 misuse COSMIC by knowingly introducing to the COSMIC Web Platform viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful;
4.4.4 attempt to gain unauthorised access to COSMIC or the COSMIC Web Platform or any server, computer or database connected to COSMIC. Licensee must not attack COSMIC via a denial-of–service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack. Breaching of this provision may constitute a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. GRL will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and GRL will cooperate with those authorities in disclosing the Registered User’s identity to them. In the event of such a breach Licensee’s right to use COSMIC will cease immediately;
4.4.5 interact with the COSMIC Web Platform or the Download Sites in such a way that their actions interfere with the proper functioning, security, stability or availability of servers or the sites caused by excessive or unreasonable load on GRL’s infrastructure or servers;
4.4.6 participate in any automated or unauthorised use of the website including automated data collection tools such as 'bots,' 'spiders,' or 'scrapers';
4.4.7 use any systematic bulk retrieval methods from COSMIC other than the official download function.
4.5 GRL continually monitors website traffic and any unauthorised use of COSMIC by Licensee may lead to GRL blocking Licensee’s access including automatic blocking of IP addresses or through other technical measures.
4.6 Licensee must not use data from COSMIC to train any Artificial Intelligence models without express written consent from GRL or its licensing partner.
4.7 Except as permitted above for Publication Enablement or with a Commercial Licence, Licensee shall not distribute, sub-license, sell, lend, or provide access (including without limitation via a public-access internet site) to the whole or any part of COSMIC to any third parties, or provide any commercial or fee paying services to third parties using COSMIC.
4.8 Licensee is required to report promptly any breach or threatened breach of any of these Licence Terms & Conditions to GRL. Failure to disclose details of such a breach is a fundamental breach of these Terms.
4.9 Licensee warrants that it has provided true and accurate information and should any of this information change, Licensee will immediately notify GRL at cosmic@sanger.ac.uk.
4.10 Registered User’s Organisation shall be liable for any breaches of these Licence Terms & Conditions by Registered User. In accepting these Licence Terms & Conditions, Registered User confirms that they are authorised to agree to the foregoing liability on behalf of their Organisation.
4.11 A Registered User is expressly prohibited from disclosing their username and password to anyone and will not allow anyone to access COSMIC by using their account credentials.
4.12 GRL supports the latest major release of COSMIC and the three releases prior to this. Licensee acknowledges that if it uses versions older than those in support this is at Licensee’s discretion and risk. Where possible GRL strongly recommends use of the most up to date version of COSMIC.
5. Marketing
5.1 Except as required to acknowledge use of COSMIC in publications, Licensee will not, and will not permit anyone else to use the name, logo or trademark of GRL (including COSMIC), or the name of any member of GRL’s staff, in any publicity, advertising or news release without the prior written approval of GRL.
6. No other rights
6.1 Except as expressly provided herein, nothing in these Licence Terms & Conditions shall operate to transfer any right or grant any licence of any intellectual property rights of GRL including in any part of COSMIC.
7. No Warranty and Disclaimer
7.1 COSMIC is a curated database and contains data entries that may be known publicly and/or may not be original. COSMIC is designed for research use only and is not designed, or tested, for providing information on which to base clinical decisions. COSMIC is provided “as is” and “as available” and Licensee receives no warranties, representations, conditions or commitments of any kind, express or implied, with respect to any element of COSMIC or any output from COSMIC, including any implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement or other warranties or conditions implied by statute. There is no warranty or commitment that any element or output from COSMIC, or the access thereto or use thereof, will be available, uninterrupted, error-free, secure, accurate, reliable or complete or that any errors will be corrected. Neither GRL nor its employees, servants or agents or providers of third-party content are responsible for any damages or losses arising from any use of such information. Past performance is no guarantee of future results so please be aware that results produced one day may not be the same as results produced based on the same inputs another day. Nothing in any element or output from COSMIC is intended to constitute professional advice. COSMIC has not been approved for use by any regulatory authority and it is not licensed to support clinical or diagnostic decisions. Use of COSMIC and any output therefrom is done at Licensee’s sole risk.
7.2 GRL hereby excludes to the fullest extent permitted by law all liability for any action, claim, proceedings, demands, losses (including but not limited to loss of profit), costs, awards, or damages that may arise (whether directly or indirectly) in any way whatsoever from the use of COSMIC by Licensee.
7.3 GRL reserves the right to make changes to COSMIC at any time without notice and may, among other things, amend or withdraw any content of COSMIC on any of the Download Sites.
7.4 No particular level of service or access to COSMIC is guaranteed by GRL.
8. Changes to the Licence Terms & Conditions
8.1 GRL may revise these Licence Terms & Conditions at any time. Licensee is advised to take notice of any changes GRL makes at the website: https://www.cosmickb.org/licensing as they are binding on Licensee.
8.2 GRL may update and change the COSMIC Web Platform and the COSMIC Data Downloads accessed from the GRL Download Sites from time to time to reflect changes to our research and changes to our Licensee's needs. GRL will try to give reasonable notice of any major changes to data download file contents or formats.
9. Termination
9.1 GRL reserves the right to terminate Licensee’s right to Use COSMIC and to revoke access to COSMIC by Licensee if, in GRL’s reasonable opinion, Licensee is in breach of or has failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Licence Terms & Conditions.
9.2 If GRL decides in its absolute discretion that it no longer wishes to make COSMIC available, it may terminate Licensee’s right to Use COSMIC under these Licence Terms & Conditions by giving at least one month’s notice via email or by a notice posted on the COSMIC Web Platform.
10. Assignment
10.1 Licensee may not assign or otherwise transfer any rights or obligations under these Licence Terms & Conditions, except with the prior written consent of GRL. GRL may assign its rights or these Licence Terms & Conditions without restriction, and the Licence Terms & Conditions shall be binding on any such successor or assign.
11. Applicable Law
11.1 These Licence Terms & Conditions (including without limitation non-contractual disputes or claims relating to them) are governed by English law and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
C. Examples of Commercial Use
The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples of the types of uses of COSMIC that are only permitted with an appropriate Commercial Licence:
a. Use of the COSMIC data, either from the COSMIC Web Platform or the Download Sites, in research and development within a commercial (for-profit) setting. This includes publication of scientific papers including COSMIC data.
b. Use of the COSMIC data, either from the COSMIC Web Platform or the Download Sites, in a commercial product or service in any setting.
c. Use of the COSMIC data, including COSMIC IDs, in product specs/information for panels and reference materials including on public facing websites.
d. Use of the COSMIC data in a diagnostic testing lab within a not-for-profit organisation such as a hospital, healthcare establishment, university organisation or charity where:
i. the data is used within this organisation to perform clinical interpretation of patients’ genetic data;
ii. the organisation typically uses COSMIC as evidence support for creating clinical reports;
iii. the organisation may be accessing COSMIC either directly or via a link in a DSS platform;
iv. the organisation may be integrating COSMIC data within its own bioinformatic pipeline;
v. the organisation may be offering bioinformatics services using COSMIC data; and
vi. the service may be either paid-for or not.
e. Use of the COSMIC data within a not-for-profit organisation such as a hospital, healthcare establishment, university organisation or charity where the organisation:
i. creates a product using COSMIC data;
ii. offers bioinformatic services using COSMIC data; or
iii. offers a paid-for training service to individuals not working in the organisation, which service uses COSMIC data.
f. Use of COSMIC data under an appropriate Decision Support Software (DSS) Licence (otherwise known as a Dynamic Software Tool Licence):
i. If you are an end user of DSS that falls under the criteria of Commercial Use (as per Section B and this Section C) your provider will need to hold an appropriate licence for such use; however for access beyond the data incorporated in the software, you as the end user will require a licence. E.g: use of any data or the COSMIC Web Platform or linking data out to the COSMIC Web Platform would require the end user to have a Commercial Licence.
ii. Data displayed in a DSS or in any report or output from a DSS must be limited to and not exceed the following:
-
-
- Mutation COSMIC ID (COSV/COSM) and associated genomic location/coordinates
- Frequency for a given somatic variant including number of samples in COSMIC where the mutation is reported
- Related gene information (including role)
- Tissues mutation occurring in (most prevalent only)
- Tumour counts
- Clinical cases that include COSMIC
-
If you wish to display more data than this please contact GRL at cosmic@sanger.ac.uk or fill out a contact form at www.cosmickb.org/about/contact-us
g. COSMIC data may never be packaged or distributed further to a customer, such as via a download or on-premise installation without an appropriate commercial licence.
h. Users cannot expose COSMIC data on a free to access platform (including but not limited to public facing websites).
Version last amended 01 April 2025.