US Patent and Trademark Office Notifies Filers of Years-Long Data Leak

The federal government agency responsible for granting patents and trademarks has confirmed it inadvertently exposed about 61,000 filers' private addresses in a years-long data spill. From a report:The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said in a notice sent to affected trademark applicants that their private domicile address -- often their home address -- inadvertently appeared in public records between February 2020 and March 2023. U.S. law requires applicants to include their private address when submitting a trademark application in efforts to crack down on fraudulent trademark filings. USPTO said the issue was discovered in one of its APIs, which allows apps used by both agency staff and filers to access a system for checking the status of pending and registered trademarks. (An API allows two things on the internet, such as an app and a server, to communicate with each other.) USPTO said that the address data also appeared in bulk datasets that the agency publishes online to aid academic and economic research.

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