The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) announced on February 10, 2026 that it has added a new category to its Trademark Design Search Code Manual for sound and motion marks. The Manual now includes new Category 30, which adds seven codes to enable trademark applicants and practitioners to more readily identify relevant sound and motion marks in clearance searches.
Sound marks and motion marks are non-traditional marks that feature an auditory or visual element. For example, NBC has trademark protection for its three-note musical chime sound, and Columbia Pictures owns a trademark registration for its introductory sequence of a flash of light emitted over a torch-bearing woman.
Previously only searchable by general keyword in the USPTO’s database, users can now more accurately search the trademark database using these specific, coded sub-categories of sound and motion marks:
- Motion (such as growing, fading, or flickering)
- Musical sounds
- Human speech or singing
- Human non-speech sounds (such as whistling, clapping, breathing, sneezing, coughing, chewing, crowd noise, yells, and shouts)
- Animal sounds
- Natural sounds (such as weather, wind, water, fire, and explosions)
- Machine, object, mechanical, and electrical sounds
The initiative arose in response to feedback from users, and the USPTO’s improvement of their search system offers a more efficient method for analyzing risk and assessing availability for new non-traditional marks.
The Quarles design rights legal team is nationally-recognized for its extensive knowledge and practice experience in this complex and important field. For questions about this article or on how to incorporate design-related legal rights into your intellectual property portfolio, please contact the author(s) of this post directly or send a message to the team via our Contact page. To subscribe to our mailing list and receive updates that highlight issues currently affecting the design rights legal field, click here.