A small biotechnology company has emerged to claim that it invented a seminal technique crucial to biotechnology research. And the government says it will consider, nearly a quarter-century after the invention was made, whether it awarded the patent to the wrong party.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has started a proceeding to determine the rightful inventor of the technique, automated DNA sequencing: scientists at the California Institute of Technology, who hold the patent, or those at Enzo Biochem, the small company.

If Enzo were to win the patent rights it could mean significant revenue for the company and could hurt Applied Biosystems, which licenses the patent in question from Caltech and dominates the DNA sequencing business. Applied Biosystems machines were the main ones used in the Human Genome Project to determine man’s genetic blueprint.

Applied Biosystems, a unit of Applera, recorded $540 million in sales of DNA sequencing machines and chemicals in the fiscal year ended June 30, accounting for 29 percent of its revenue. Caltech is estimated to have earned tens of millions of dollars from that and related patents.