You receive an email or letter from a lawyer. It arrives with formal letterhead, a dense legal summary, and a demand: stop using your business name immediately. It accuses you of trademark infringement, and it threatens litigation, damages, and attorney fees if you do not comply within a set number of days.
Your first instinct might be to dismiss it as a bluff. You have been using your name for years, and you have invested real time and money in building it. Or you might panic and comply immediately, changing your name before you understand whether the threat actually holds up. Both reactions are mistakes, and the right response is controlled, strategic, and grounded in how trademark law actually works. A cease and desist letter is not a court judgment, but it is not a mere suggestion either.
What a Cease and Desist Letter Actually Is
A cease and desist letter is a formal demand to stop an alleged unlawful activity. In trademark disputes, it typically alleges that your business name, logo, phrase, or product line conflicts with another party's trademark rights. The letter itself carries no legal force. The sender cannot unilaterally stop you from using your name. But the letter is evidence of notice, and courts care a great deal about notice.
If someone later sues you for infringement and can show that you received a cease and desist letter and kept using the mark anyway, that fact can shift the case from unintentional infringement to willful infringement. Willful infringement is what opens the door to enhanced damages. This is why ignoring a cease and desist letter is one of the more expensive mistakes a business owner can make. Silence does not protect your position. It builds a record a future court can use against you.
What It Can Cost You
The owner of a registered trademark has the right under the Lanham Act to exclude others from using confusingly similar marks, and can bring that claim in federal court. If they win, the court can order you to pay their lost profits and any profits you earned using the mark, and if the infringement is willful, that award can be multiplied, sometimes up to three times. The prevailing party can also recover attorney fees, and trademark litigation is not cheap. Industry cost surveys regularly show trademark infringement cases running well into the tens of thousands of dollars, often into six figures once a case reaches discovery. A court can also order you to stop using the mark entirely, and violating that order is contempt of court.
A cease and desist letter is what starts this exposure. Responding and engaging early gives you a chance to resolve the dispute before any of it becomes real. Ignoring it removes that option.
How to Actually Respond
Do not ignore the letter, and do not comply immediately without investigation. Engage a trademark attorney to evaluate the claim, since the right response depends entirely on how strong it actually is.
Start by assessing the claim itself. An attorney can review the sender's registration, if they have one, how similar the marks really are, and whether your goods or services genuinely overlap with theirs. Not every letter rests on a strong claim, and some senders overreach.
Document your first use. Trademark rights depend in part on who used the mark in commerce first, so evidence of your early use, old business records, website archives, receipts, early customer contracts, can meaningfully strengthen your position.
Consider your actual options. You might deny the claim outright, propose a coexistence agreement covering different markets or categories, or negotiate a license. Which option makes sense depends on the strength of the other side's claim and how much risk you are willing to carry. Whatever you decide, respond within the deadline. Letting it pass only strengthens the sender's position.
When Settlement Actually Makes Sense
Some letters rest on legitimate rights. If you genuinely adopted a name confusingly similar to an established mark in your industry, fighting that claim can cost more than resolving it. This is where an attorney's honest assessment matters: if the claim is weak, you fight it, and if it is strong, you negotiate rather than dig in. Sometimes the cheapest path is a rebrand. If new signage costs a fraction of what a losing judgment would cost, the math is not close.
What Not to Do
Do not respond without legal counsel. A poorly worded response, even one that only says you "may have been" infringing or offers to "consider" stopping, can be used against you later as an admission.
Do not agree to stop using the mark without understanding whether stopping resolves anything. Some trademark owners send the same letter to multiple businesses using similar marks, and complying does not settle who actually has the stronger claim.
Do not assume years of use protects you by itself. A federally registered mark can be enforced against an unregistered, conflicting mark regardless of how long you have been using yours.
What This Means for Business Owners
A cease and desist letter signals that a dispute is escalating. It is not proof you are infringing, and it is not something to wave off either. It is the moment to bring in legal counsel, understand your actual exposure, and choose a response that protects your business rather than reacts to fear. The cost of getting this right early is modest next to the cost of getting it wrong.
Received a Cease and Desist Letter?
J Brantley Law helps business owners in San Antonio, Austin, and across Georgia and Texas evaluate trademark cease and desist letters and decide on the right response strategy. Book a consultation to talk through your options.
Book a Consultation →