Research Of Issues Of Sound Mark Registration

Sound mark is a recognizable mark that goods or services providers constituted by music or some kind of especial sounds, to distinguishing the source of the same kind of goods or services. The new Chinese Trademark Law revised in August30,2013, formally approbated the sound mark.Currently, the scholars were focused primarily on whether the sounds can be registered as a kind of trademark form. Because of The new Chinese Trademark Law has been clearly defined sound marks can be registered, the emphasis of the research of the sound mark should change to the issues during the process of the application for registration of the sound marks. The sound marks are dynamic, invisible and without borders. We should make a distinction between the sound marks and the traditional marks during the process of registration. However, The provision of the sound mark in the new Chinese Trademark Law did not clear enough, it limited to added the "sound" can be registered as a kind of trademark form. In the current trademark registration legal system, we can’t find the clear censor standard about the distinctive character of the sound marks, that it may cause some obstacles to the registration of the sound marks. The universal sounds had omitted out of the three categories of universal marks, it can’t be sure whether the universal sounds can be registered as trademark or after obtained the distinctive character by using the sound as a sound mark. For the written expression of sound marks, the new Chinese Trademark Law did not stipulated clearly, it can not meet the requirements of the written expression of trademark registration. There are three kinds of legislative style:graphic expression, literal expression and blended expression.In order to solve these problems about the sound mark, China should revise and improve the legal protection system of the sound marks as soon as possible, set a series of censor standard about the distinctive character of the sound marks, and clearly unified the registration standard of the universal sound marks, and select the blended expression for the written expression of sound marks by comparing the three kinds of advanced foreign legislative system.