Coralie Prendergast
Founding partner
Trademarks and brand disputes for food, fashion and consumer brands. She answers the letters bigger companies send.
Trademarks, copyrights and patents
What you make should stay yours.
Three lawyers in the Arts District who search, file, license and defend the names, works and inventions of founders, designers, musicians and studios.
Matters
Four claims, and the files behind them
Search twice.
Trademark, registered
A roaster’s coffee name. Our search found a near match in a neighboring class, so we narrowed the goods before filing, and the mark registered on the first pass.
Register before you need to.
Copyright, settled
A photographer’s images, registered the month she shot them. When a furniture seller used them, one letter took them down and paid a license fee for the months they ran.
The examiner is a reader.
Design patent, issued
A ceramic lamp base. We answered the examiner’s rejection with cleaner drawings and a short argument, and the patent issued on that reply.
A license is a product.
Licensing, signed
A muralist’s artwork, licensed to a shoe brand for one season, with a cap on the run and her approval on every colorway.
Sample matters, written to show the kind of work we take. Every matter is different, past results don’t guarantee a similar outcome, and the trademark, copyright and patent offices decide each application on its own.
The firm
Small enough to know your catalog by heart
We started Prendergast Ekstrom to do one kind of work well: keeping what people make in their own hands. The name on a label, the song on a record, the shape of a lamp, the code under an app.
Every matter has one lawyer from the first search to the last filing. You get a fixed fee for each step, in writing, before we start, and a plain answer when a filing isn’t worth the money.
We meet at the office on Traction Avenue or by video. Most clients never need to come in.
The lawyers
Read us before you hire us
Each page says what she files, where she’s admitted and how she works with clients.
Helle Ekstrom
Partner
Design and utility patents for product makers, and the licenses that follow. Registered to practice before the Patent Office.
Yara Benhamou
Associate
Copyrights and licensing for musicians, photographers, filmmakers and artists. She registers catalogs and reads the deals that come with them.