You received a cease-and-desist letter. What now?
First, the useful reframe: a cease-and-desist letter is a piece of private correspondence. It is not a court filing, not a USPTO filing, and not an order. Nothing has been decided.
That does not make it harmless. It makes it a document to read carefully rather than react to. What follows is general information about how these letters work and what the law says — not advice about your situation, which depends on facts this article does not know.
Read it for structure, not tone
Demand letters are written to feel heavier than they are. Strip the adjectives and find four things:
Who is the sender? Not the law firm — the client. What entity claims rights, and since when?
What right is claimed? A federal registration? Common-law use? Copyright? A contract? Letters often blur several together, and the analysis for each is different.
What conduct is objected to? A brand name, a logo, a product photo, a hashtag, a domain? Narrow claims and sweeping claims look identical in a demand letter and are not identical in law.
What is actually demanded? Stop using the name entirely? Change one product line? Transfer a domain? Sign a document? Pay money? The gap between what they say you did and what they ask for is often the most informative part of the letter.
Which deadlines are real
This is where people make expensive mistakes in both directions.
The date in the letter is the sender's date. "Respond by close of business Friday" is a negotiating posture. No statute or rule creates it. Missing it does not forfeit a defense or admit anything.
Real deadlines come from tribunals, and they look different. Some examples of deadlines that are set by rule:
If a federal lawsuit has been filed and you have been served, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(a)(1)(A)(i) requires a responsive pleading "within 21 days after being served with the summons and complaint" — 60 days if you timely returned a waiver of service.
If your application has been published and someone wants to oppose it, 37 C.F.R. § 2.102 allows extensions of the opposition period, but "the time for filing an opposition shall not be extended beyond 180 days from the date of publication."
If an opposition has been filed against your application, 37 C.F.R. § 2.106(a) provides that if no answer is filed "within the time initially set, or as may later be reset by the Board, the opposition may be decided as in case of default."
If the USPTO has issued an office action in your own application, the USPTO requires a response "within three months of the date specified in the heading of the email notice," extendable once by three months for a fee — with Madrid-based applicants on a six-month, non-extendable period.
The distinction is simple. A deadline created by a rule has consequences written into the rule. A deadline created by opposing counsel has whatever consequence they can persuade someone to impose later.
That said — a demand letter frequently arrives because a real deadline is running somewhere. Check whether your own application is published, whether an extension of time to oppose has been filed against it, and whether anything has been filed in court. Those dates are public and they are the ones that bind.
Why you do not ignore it
Silence is a choice with consequences.
Ignoring a letter forecloses the cheapest version of the outcome. Most of these disputes end in some negotiated adjustment, and the negotiating window is widest before anyone has spent money on a filing.
Continued conduct after notice can also matter to what a court later awards. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a), a plaintiff who establishes a violation may recover the defendant's profits, damages, and costs, and "the court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party." Where counterfeit marks are involved, the statute is harsher still — treble damages under § 1117(b) and elective statutory damages under § 1117(c).
And ignoring the letter does not stop parallel action. Marketplace and platform takedown programs operate on their own timelines, and a delisting can arrive without warning.
Why you do not fire back immediately
The instinct to send a same-day rebuttal is understandable and usually costly.
An angry reply commits you to positions before you have investigated your own facts — your first-use dates, what you actually filed, what your specimens show, what your prior agreements say. Those facts sometimes change the analysis substantially, and they are much easier to state once than to walk back.
A reply also has legal consequence. Under the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, a federal court may declare parties' rights "in a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction." The Supreme Court in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. framed the test as "whether the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment." Correspondence between the parties is part of those circumstances. Escalating exchanges can move a dispute toward litigation faster than either side intended.
Acknowledging receipt and asking for the basis of the claim is a different act from arguing the merits.
Assessing whether the sender actually has rights
A demand is an assertion. Assertions vary in strength.
Check the registration, if there is one. Every claimed registration has a public file. Confirm it exists, that it is live rather than cancelled or expired, what goods and services it actually covers, and what the specimens show. Registrations lapse — 15 U.S.C. § 1058 provides that a registration "shall be canceled by the Director" absent timely declarations of continued use.
Check whether it is incontestable. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1065 and § 1115(b), an incontestable registration is "conclusive evidence" of validity, ownership, and the exclusive right to use. Even then, § 1115(b) preserves defenses including fraud, abandonment, descriptive fair use, prior use, functionality, and equitable defenses such as laches and acquiescence.
Unregistered rights are still rights.15 U.S.C. § 1125(a) reaches any use likely to cause confusion "as to the affiliation, connection, or association" of one person with another. A sender without a registration is not automatically without a claim.
Dilution is a narrower door than senders suggest. Section 1125(c) is limited to marks "widely recognized by the general consuming public of the United States as a designation of source," and expressly excludes fair use, parody, criticism, commentary, news reporting, and noncommercial use.
Priority is the hinge. If your use predates their rights, the whole picture changes — which is why establishing your own dated evidence early matters more than drafting a reply quickly.
The range of responses
There is a spectrum here, and it is wider than "comply" or "fight." The options generally discussed include:
Do nothing, accepting the risk that the sender escalates.
Acknowledge and request substantiation — asking for the registration numbers, dates of first use, and the specific conduct at issue.
Respond substantively, explaining why the claim does not reach your use, whether on priority, absence of likely confusion, fair use, or the limits of the registration.
Negotiate a narrowing — a change to presentation, a limitation on categories or channels, a phase-out period.
Negotiate a coexistence or consent agreement, in which both parties define lanes and agree to conditions designed to avoid confusion.
Rebrand, sometimes the rational commercial answer where the brand equity is young and the fight is expensive.
Challenge their rights through USPTO mechanisms — expungement or reexamination on nonuse grounds, or a petition to cancel under 15 U.S.C. § 1064, which permits cancellation at any time for genericness, abandonment, functionality, or fraud, and after three years where a registered mark "has never been used in commerce."
Seek a declaratory judgment, where an actual controversy exists.
Which of these fits any given situation depends entirely on the facts, the evidence, and the commercial stakes. No one should pick from this list based on an article.
When this becomes genuinely urgent
Some signals change the timeline:
A complaint has been filed and served, or a motion for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction is pending.
The letter alleges counterfeiting rather than confusion — the remedies under § 1117(b) and (c) are categorically different.
An opposition or cancellation has been instituted, and the Board's schedule is running.
Your own USPTO deadlines are running concurrently.
A platform takedown has hit revenue.
The mark is embedded in inventory, packaging, or a funding or acquisition process where a dispute has to be disclosed.
The short version
Do not panic, and do not perform confidence you have not earned yet. Preserve documents. Pull your own dated evidence of use. Verify what the sender actually owns. Separate the deadline they invented from the deadlines a rule created. Then decide with information rather than adrenaline.
This article is general information about trademark disputes, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It is not a recommendation to take or refrain from any action. Anyone who has received a demand letter should consult a qualified attorney about their specific facts.
Sources:15 U.S.C. § 1058 (Cornell LII) · 15 U.S.C. § 1064 (Cornell LII) · 15 U.S.C. § 1065 (Cornell LII) · 15 U.S.C. § 1115 (Cornell LII) · 15 U.S.C. § 1117 (Cornell LII) · 15 U.S.C. § 1125 (Cornell LII) · 28 U.S.C. § 2201 (Cornell LII) · Fed. R. Civ. P. 12 (Cornell LII) · 37 C.F.R. § 2.102 (Cornell LII) · 37 C.F.R. § 2.106 (Cornell LII) · MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118 (2007) · USPTO — Response time period · USPTO — Requesting an expungement or reexamination proceeding