Sony Seeks to Trademark ‘Acoustic Surface Audio’ Branding for Its OLED TVs

Sony applied July 23 to register “Acoustic Surface Audio” as a U.S. trademark for an “electronic audio apparatus sold as a component feature of television sets that allows sound to output directly from the surface of the television display,” Patent and Trademark Office records show. A week after filing the application, Sony announced at a New York news conference it's beefing up the audio in the AF9 OLED TVs it's introducing with Acoustic Surface Audio+, which adds a center channel and an additional subwoofer channel, using actuators “hidden behind an acoustically transparent screen” (see 1807310045). Sony began commercializing the Acoustic Surface name -- without the Audio suffix -- with the CES 2017 introduction of its first OLED TVs (see 1701050004). Sony applied in June 2017 to register the Acoustic Surface trademark, but the PTO in March denied the application on grounds that Acoustic Surface is “merely descriptive” of Sony’s goods and services. The application remains active at PTO, as Sony has until Sept. 14 to respond to the refusal.