The government agency in charge of issuing patents and trademarks is warning thousands of applicants that their personal addresses were leaked in a second data breach in the past two years.

The US Patent and Trademark Office notified trademark applicants this week that their personal home address was inadvertently made public in records from August 23, 2023 to April 19, 2024.

In order to prevent fraudulent trademark filings, applicants must provide a private address when submitting their paperwork to the agency, as mandated by U.S. trademark law.

The USPTO stated that although regular searches on their website did not display addresses, approximately 14,000 applicants' private addresses were included in large datasets that the USPTO makes available online for academic and economic research purposes.