From September 1, 2017, the Thai Department of Intellectual Property will accept applications for sound trademark registration, as provided for in Ministerial Regulation No. 5 B.E. 2560 (A.D. 2017), issued under the Trademark Act B.E. 2534 (A.D. 1991).

To apply to register a sound trademark, clause 11 of the Ministerial Regulation requires applicants to submit the following items, in addition to the list of goods or services:

• a detailed written description of the sound and specifying whether the sound is categorized as a human sound, an animal sound, a piece of music/melody, or other type of sounds; and
• an audio recording of the mark in a digital file format, such as MP3, saved on a USB flash drive, with a maximum length of 30 seconds.

Applicants may also submit musical notations or a spectrogram of their sound as part of their application if they choose.

To be eligible for registration, sound trademarks must not directly represent a product’s properties, or be sounds naturally made by the product or made as part of the product’s usage or operation (e.g., the sound of cows cannot be registered as a sound trademark for dairy products).