Protecting your business’s intellectual property is a crucial ongoing effort. Your identity, products, and innovations are what set you apart from the competition and provide opportunities for long-term success. Failing to protect those proactively or reactively is a surefire way to cost your business significant value.
This brings us to the cease and desist letter. It’s one of the most recognized terms in IP, even popping up multiple times during a rap beef between two of the most famous artists in the world, Kendrick Lamar and Drake. These letters are powerful tools when used properly, but it’s important to understand the limits to that power and how to effectively use them.
What Power Does a Cease and Desist Letter Hold?
The short answer to this question is that a cease and desist letter holds no real legal authority. These are merely documents that anyone can send to an individual or entity, asking them to cease an action and desist from doing it in the future.
What these letters do, however, is set the stage for further legal action should the infringing act continue. If a business receives a cease and desist letter but still continues an infringing act, then penalties in an intellectual property litigation case can significantly increase. This would be evidence that the individual or entity was intentionally conducting infringing activities.
So, while a cease and desist letter holds no direct power in itself, it certainly plays a critical role in any ongoing legal attempt to prevent infringement and recoup any financial losses related to the infringement.
Your Business Should Be Filing More Cease and Desist Letters
We want to be blunt in our approach to this. Cease and desist letters play a key role in protecting your business’s intellectual property. If you have seen infringing art, words, phrases, or other work from competing businesses and have not sent a cease and desist letter, you are running the risk of voluntarily sacrificing your IP.
Most intellectual property must be actively defended to be recognized legally and to hold value. If you let everyone else copy your work, you lose that value and never get it back without taking action. The public perception gets confused on where the original work even comes from and you’re left looking like a cheap copy of yourself.
Bryant Taylor Law Will Send a Cease and Desist Letter on Your Behalf
We regularly send cease and desist letters on behalf of clients as a precursor to intellectual property litigation (if necessary). Our team knows how to effectively draft these documents and how and when to send them to be most effective in defending our clients. If the letter is ignored, then we will proceed to IP litigation to defend your brand. Contact us at Bryant Taylor Law to safeguard your valuable intellectual property rights and ensure your business maintains its unique market position.
