A trademark cease-and-desist letter is a private demand, not a court judgment. Do not ignore it, but do not assume every allegation is correct. Preserve the letter and your business records, calendar any response date, and evaluate ownership, priority, confusion, defenses, and business options.
Your early communications can affect later negotiations or litigation. A measured investigation is usually more useful than an immediate admission, denial, or public post.
First steps after receiving the letter
- Save the letter, envelope, attachments, and transmission metadata.
- Calendar the requested response date and check for any separate court or agency deadline.
- Tell relevant employees not to delete or alter potentially relevant records.
- Preserve your first-use evidence, sales records, advertisements, packaging, websites, and customer communications.
- Avoid contacting the sender until you understand the facts and objectives.
Check what the sender actually claims
Identify the asserted marks, registrations, goods or services, claimed first-use dates, geographic scope, accused uses, legal theories, and requested relief. Verify registration status in the USPTO’s TSDR system rather than relying only on the letter.
A registration can be important, but its wording, owner, status, and covered goods or services matter. A registration does not automatically prohibit every use of the same word.
Assess priority and likely confusion
Compare each party’s dates and actual marketplace use. Then consider the marks as consumers encounter them, the relationship between the offerings, customer care, channels, geography, and confusion evidence. The governing factor test varies by federal circuit.
Common mistake: Do not quietly redesign the website and discard the old version. Preserve the accused materials and their dates first. Changes may be sensible later, but the historical evidence may be important.
Consider defenses and counterclaims
Potential issues may include descriptive fair use, nominative reference, consent, license, abandonment, fraud allegations, priority, geographic limits, nonuse, or invalidity. Some defenses depend on precise wording and circuit law. A recipient may also have claims of its own.
Response options
- Request additional information or time
- Explain why the claim is unsupported
- Offer targeted changes without admitting liability
- Negotiate a coexistence, phase-out, license, or settlement
- Stop the challenged use when the risk and economics support that choice
- Seek declaratory relief or defend litigation when necessary
The best response depends on legal strength, rebranding cost, customer impact, insurance, public relations, and the sender’s apparent objective. Silence can prompt escalation, but a rushed substantive response can surrender useful positions.
Watch for real legal deadlines
A letter’s requested date is usually set by the sender. Court summonses, temporary restraining order papers, TTAB notices, and platform deadlines require separate attention and may carry legal consequences. Confirm what was received.
Read next: what trademark infringement means.
The practical next step
Send counsel the complete letter, a chronology, registrations and applications, first-use evidence, current and historical branding, sales channels, and your business objective. That allows a faster assessment and a response tailored to the actual risk.