Cease and desist letters, claims and responses
We will write the claim that leaves no comfortable way to stay silent, or answer the one that arrived — and tell you honestly where each reply leads.
When you need a cease and desist letter
Someone is selling your work
A copy is on sale under a different name — copyright infringement still earning someone money. The first letter decides whether this ends in a takedown or in proceedings.
A letter arrived with a deadline
A demand names a sum and a date. Silence does not stop that date, and it does not stop the sender from going further.
A contractor stopped delivering
Work was paid for and never finished. A claim written properly is what turns the argument into something a third party can decide.
A platform took your product down
A complaint from someone else removed your listing. Getting it back is a written answer to the platform, on its own terms and its own clock.
A client refuses to pay
An invoice is months overdue and the emails have stopped working. A written demand is where a disagreement turns into a claim someone else can decide.
You want it to stop quietly
What you want least is for this to become a public story. What the first letter says decides whether the other side can keep it quiet too.
What a cease and desist letter says
A claim is not a letter of complaint. It is a document written for three readers at once: the other side, who has to decide whether to settle; a court or an arbitrator, who may read it a year later; and you, who will be held to every word of it.
The same is true of an answer. A reply sent in the first hours, before anyone has read the contract, turns into a document that is quoted back to you for as long as the matter lasts.
What you get
- A claim written to be answered
- An answer to the letter you received
- A sober read of your position
- The routes the case can take
- A record that holds up later
What we will read first
- The contract, and what it says about notices, deadlines and where a dispute is decided.
- The correspondence in full: what was said in a chat does not disappear from the file.
- Evidence of the breach and of the loss, and whether both can still be gathered today, while the traces are there.
- Time limits, which run whether or not anybody counts them, and which end quietly.
What the letter has to do
- Name what happened, in facts the other side cannot argue with and a reader can check.
- Say precisely what you want: money, a stop, a public correction, a return of material.
- Give a real deadline and say what follows if it passes, without a threat nobody intends to carry out.
- Leave a way out the other side can take without losing face — that is where a matter can end.
What decides the outcome
- What the contract says about where a dispute is heard and under which law: that one clause decides where everything after it happens.
- Whether the loss can be shown in documents. A breach nobody priced at the time gets priced afterwards, from what was written then.
- How much of the story exists in writing. What was agreed in a meeting has to be proved from something, and that something is what was written down right after.
- Whether the other side has anything to pay with: an award against an empty company is a piece of paper.
If the letter came to you
- We will separate the genuine claim from what was added for weight.
- We will say which parts are worth answering and which are better left unanswered.
- We will keep the answer inside the platform’s or the contract’s deadline, where one applies.
- We will tell you what an answer concedes, while it can still be changed.
Where the question is which forum to choose and on what terms, that is dispute resolution strategy; where a hearing is already scheduled, it is court representation.
Sources: the convention on foreign arbitral awards has 172 parties, and its article V lists the grounds for refusing recognition and enforcement. Legislation based on or influenced by the UNCITRAL Model Law has been adopted in 93 states. The convention on settlements from mediation has 23 parties and reaches international commercial disputes only.
Stages of work
Reading the file — 2–3 working days.
We will read the contract, the whole correspondence and whatever evidence exists, and tell you what your position actually is, unsoftened.
This is where an honest answer still costs nothing. A weak position found now costs a conversation; found in a hearing, the other side finds it first.
Deciding what you want to end with.
Money, a stop, a public correction or a quiet exit are different goals, and they need different letters. We will price each of them in time and in risk.
A goal that is not written down changes shape under pressure, and it changes at the worst moment — when the other side offers something close to it but not it.
The letter, or the answer to one.
We will draft it, you will approve it, and it will go out in a way that can be proved to have arrived.
Everything in it is something we can stand behind: a deadline we mean, a demand we can explain, and no threat that would embarrass you later.
Negotiation, where the other side answers.
This is where a matter can end, and what ends it is a settlement written down properly. A verbal agreement to stop is worth whatever the next argument says it is worth.
We will record what was offered, by whom and when. A settlement nobody can reconstruct a year later is the same dispute.
Mediation, where both sides agree to it.
A third person helps the two sides reach a settlement they both sign. Mediation does not follow a hearing schedule. International commercial settlements reached this way have their own convention — it leaves out consumer, family, inheritance and employment disputes, and few states have joined it so far.
Arbitration or court.
Where the contract names arbitration, the award can be put forward for enforcement in the states party to the convention on foreign arbitral awards — which also lists the grounds for refusing it, and which some states apply with reservations. Where it is not named, the forum follows the contract and the law behind it.
Enforcing what was agreed or awarded.
A settlement, a judgment and an award are enforced differently, and in different places. We will say at the start which of them your case can end with.
Enforcement is where a case stops being about who was right. It becomes a question of where the assets are, and that is worth asking at the beginning.
Our other work on disputes sits in the Dispute Resolution area.
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