A cease and desist letter is fast, cheap, and feels like action. One letter from counsel, sent to a seller who is clearly infringing, and many brands expect the listings to come down within days. Sometimes that is exactly what happens. But the letter is a tool with a narrow effective range, and outside that range it does more harm than good. Understanding where it works starts with understanding what the recipient fears.
Counterfeit sellers fear account loss, supply disruption, and legal costs, roughly in that order. A demand letter only works when it credibly threatens one of those three. Against a domestic seller with a real business and assets, it can. Against an anonymous overseas storefront that will abandon the account tonight, it threatens nothing they care about.
A seller operating in your jurisdiction, with inventory, a warehouse, or a real business behind the storefront, has something to lose. A letter that names the registered rights, documents the infringement with dates, and sets a firm deadline gets attention because the next step is a lawsuit they can picture.
Gray market sellers, ex-distributors, and authorized sellers gone rogue often respond to a letter because they have a relationship with the brand to protect. The letter formalizes what a phone call started: stop, or lose the relationship.
Letters to platforms, hosts, and payment processors work differently: they create a legal record that the intermediary was notified. That record is what unlocks the next rung of enforcement if the listings stay up.
When you already have clean test buy evidence and a documented pattern, the letter becomes the opening of a settlement conversation rather than a bluff. Sellers settle when the evidence package makes the outcome obvious.
Against anonymous or overseas sellers, the letter is a warning shot that warns the target. It tells them the brand is watching, which is exactly the information they need to rotate storefronts, change seller names, and move inventory before enforcement lands. Brands that send the letter first and investigate second routinely find that the investigation got harder the moment the letter arrived.
It also backfires when the claims are wrong. Threatening a counterfeit lawsuit against a gray market seller moving genuine product, or against a seller with a legitimate defense, can turn the brand into the defendant. Every claim in the letter should be one counsel can defend in court, because the worst version of this story is the recipient publishing the letter and suing for an abusive threat. Have counsel review the evidence before the letter goes out, not after the response comes back.
Specificity is what separates an effective letter from a template. Name the trademark registrations with numbers and jurisdictions. Identify the infringing listings by URL, seller name, and date observed. Attach or reference the test buy evidence. State the demanded action, removal of the listings and a written commitment to stop, with a concrete deadline, usually ten to fourteen days. And state the next step plainly: what the brand will file, and where, if the deadline passes. Vague letters get vague responses.
Send it to every address you have: the seller's listed contact, the platform's legal or IP contact, and any known business address. Document the sending. The letter's value is partly as evidence later, so treat it as a record from the start: keep the sent copy, the proof of delivery, and any response, or the lack of one, in the enforcement file.
The brands that use demand letters well send few of them, each one backed by evidence and aimed at a target it can actually move. The brands that use them badly send them at everything and wonder why nothing changes. If the target is anonymous, overseas, or judgment-proof, skip the letter and go straight to platform escalation and supply disruption. Save the letters for the fights they can win.
You can, but you should not. A letter from counsel carries weight a self-sent letter does not, and counsel will stop you from making claims the evidence does not support. The cost of one reviewed letter is trivial next to the cost of a bad one.
Then the letter did its job as a record: you notified them, set a deadline, and they defaulted. Move to the next step you named in the letter, promptly, because a threat you do not follow through on teaches every future recipient to ignore you.
Usually not in the first letter. Lead with cessation: stop the infringement, remove the listings, commit in writing. Damages and settlement figures come after the infringement stops, or in a separate negotiation once you have leverage.
No. These are practical notes from enforcement work, not legal advice. For anything involving registered rights, contracts, or litigation, talk to an intellectual property attorney before you act.
Not every unauthorized seller is a counterfeiter. Gray market sellers move genuine product through unofficial channels, and the playbook for them is completely different.
Screenshots show what a listing claims. A test buy proves what the seller ships: no brand packaging, wrong materials, replica serial numbers.