The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks is alerting thousands of filers whose private addresses were exposed following other data breaches over the years.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said in an email to affected trademark applicants this week that their private domicile address – which may include a home address – on August 23, 2023. Appeared in public records between April 19, 2024 and

US trademark law requires that applicants include a private address when filing their paperwork with the agency to prevent fraudulent trademark filings.

The USPTO said that while no addresses appeared during a routine search of the agency's website, the private addresses of about 14,000 applicants were included in the bulk data sets. The USPTO publishes online. To support academic and economic research.

The agency blamed the incident, saying the addresses were “inadvertently exposed when we migrated to a new IT system,” according to an email to affected applicants, obtained by TechCrunch. “Importantly, this incident was not the result of malicious activity,” the email said.

Upon discovery of the security lapse, the agency said it “blocked access to the affected bulk data set, removed the files, implemented a patch to fix the exposure, tested our solutions, and restored access.” Enabled.”

If this sounds remarkably familiar, the USPTO made a similar disclosure of applicant address data last June. At the time, the USPTO said Inadvertently exposed Participating through the release of its bulk data sets through the year-long data on the private addresses of nearly 61,000 applicants, it informed those affected that the issue had been resolved.

Reached for comment Wednesday, USPTO Deputy Chief Information Officer Deborah Stephens told TechCrunch that the new exposure was discovered as part of the agency's efforts to modernize its IT infrastructure.

“The fix that we had was all in place, and remains in place,” Stephens said. “As we modernize and take over legacy systems from decades of standards and protocols, the creation and modernization of this bulk data set has led to a system breakdown.”

Stephens said the USPTO introduced new checks when collecting and publishing its bulk data sets, including “error correction with file creation,” to prevent future disclosures of personal information. Should.

“We're looking at our legacy of being able to identify ways to modernize our processes by taking a more holistic view of our data, particularly external or public-facing systems. IT can improve development, processing and delivery,” Stephens said.

The USPTO told victims that the agency had “no reason to believe” that the exposed addresses had been misused.