Acease and desist letter is a document sent by one party, often abusiness, to warn another party that they believe the other party is committing an unlawful act, such ascopyright infringement, and that they will take legal action if the other party continues the alleged unlawful activity. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not discontinue specified conduct, or take certain actions, by deadlines set in the letter, the letter's recipient may be sued.[1][2] The phrase "cease and desist" is alegal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. A cease and desist letter issued by a government entity, called acease and desist order, is "a warning of impending judicial enforcement".[3]
Although cease and desist letters are not exclusively used in the area ofintellectual property, particularly in regards tocopyright infringement, such letters "are frequently utilized in disputes concerning intellectual property and represent an important feature of the intellectual property law landscape".[2] The holder of an intellectual property right such as acopyrighted work, atrademark, or apatent, may send the cease and desist letter to inform a third party "of the right holder's rights, identity, and intentions to enforce the rights". The letter may merely contain a licensing offer or may be an explicit threat of a lawsuit. A cease and desist letter often triggerslicensing negotiations, and is a frequent first step towardslitigation.[2]
Receiving numerous cease and desist letters may be very costly for the recipient. Each claim in the letters must be evaluated, and it should be decided whether to respond to the letters, "whether or not to obtain an attorney's opinion letter, prepare for a lawsuit, and perhaps initiate [in case of letters regarding a potential patent infringement] a search for alternatives and the development of design-around technologies."[2]
Cease and desist letters are sometimes used tointimidate recipients and can be "an effective tool used by corporations to chill the critical speech ofgripe sites operators".[4] A company owning atrademark may send such letter to a gripe site operator alleging atrademark infringement, although the actual use of the trademark by the gripe site operator may fall under afair use exception (in compliance with, in the U.S., the protection of free speech under theFirst Amendment).[4]
To preventgenericizing and potential loss of itstrademark,Google has discouraged use of the word as a verb, particularly when used as asynonym for general web searching. On February 23, 2003,[5] Google sent a cease and desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of Word Spy, a website that tracksneologisms.[6] In an article inThe Washington Post, Frank Ahrens discussed the letter he received from a Google lawyer that demonstrated "appropriate" and "inappropriate" ways to use the verb "google".[7]
AuthorPatrick Wensink usedJack Daniel's famous branding without licensing as a cover for his 2012 bookBroken Piano for President. Jack Daniel's requested only future printings of the book to have the cover changed and offered compensation.
In September 2012,AwardWallet, TripIt and MileWise received a number of cease and desist letters from American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, demanding that companies discontinue accessing their websites for tracking clients' miles rewards programs.[8][9]
In 2017, a cease and desist letter sent byNetflix for an unauthorizedStranger Things-relatedbar event was noted by news outlets such asFortune andQuartz for itshumorous wording.[10]
Donald Trump sent a cease and desist letter toCNN asking them to retract a poll that showed him being 14 percentage points behind his opponentJoe Biden during thepresidential election,[11] promptingThe Atlantic to warn about attacks on the media.[12]
In 2021,Google's platformYouTube issued a significant number of cease and desist notices to the creators of various music bots onDiscord, such as Rythm and Groovy. These music bots allowed users to request songs and have the bot create a queue. This was done by pulling the audio stream from variousstreaming andvideo platforms, including YouTube, and then played that audio on the Discord voice channel. Because such music bots did not play any of the advertisements included on the video-hosting site, the company alleged missing revenue for itself and the content uploaders. A spokesperson for Google toldThe Verge that Groovy violated YouTube'sterms of service for "modifying the service and using it for commercial purposes".[13] The makers of Groovy had decided to comply with Google's request by shutting down the bot on August 30, 2021. According to estimations, the bot had more than 250 million users.[14]
In 2022,Disney issued a letter of cease and desist to the creators ofClub Penguin Rewritten, a game that was created as a remake ofClub Penguin after its shutdown on March 31, 2017.[15]
Google issued a letter of cease and desist to the creators ofYouTube Vanced, an Android app developed as a third-party modification of YouTube. The app, which utilizesapk (file format), allowed its users to skip advertisements, among other functions. Since March 13, 2022, the app has been discontinued, with all links being removed.[16]
Nintendo issued a letter of cease and desist to the creators ofYuzu, avideo game console emulator for theNintendo Switch. The program allowed its users to not pay or participate ingrinding fordownloadable content, such as all of its Booster Course Passes and a Gold Mario forMario Kart 8.[17][18][19]The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released May 12, 2023; however, aninternet leak was discovered on file hosting sitehttps://nyaa.si/ dated May 1, 2023. The file can then be read by Ryujinx, aNintendo Switch emulator.[20][21]
ThePhilippineNational Telecommunications Commission administered a cease and desist order againstABS-CBN tostop broadcasting on May 5, 2020, after its franchise expired the day before (May 4, 2020). At 7:52 pm (PHT), ABS-CBN stopped its broadcast in compliance with the NTC's letter,signing off all of its free TV and radio stations across the country (ABS-CBN Channel 2,S+A Channel 23,DZMM 630, andMOR 101.9). The said agency also gave ABS-CBN ten days to explain why its assigned frequencies should not berecalled.[22] On June 30, 2020, considering thatChannel 43 was also included in the May 5, 2020 shutdown order issued by the NTC against ABS-CBN (although ABS-CBN CEOCarlo L. Katigbak insisted that it is part of theirblocktime agreement withAMCARA Broadcasting Network), the NTC andSolicitor GeneralJose Calida released two alias cease-and-desist orders againstChannel 43 on digital TV receiverABS-CBN TV Plus andSky Cable's nationwide satellite serviceSky Direct to cease further operations.[23]
On January 22, 2024, the National Telecommunications Commission issued a cease-and-desist order toSonshine Media Network International, citing its failure to comply with the original 30-day suspension order issued by the said agency.[24][25]
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