subject: Cease and Desist Letter [print this page] Cease and Desist Letter Cease and Desist Letter
The Cease and Desist letter may be familiar to you as a way to get someone to stop a threatening behavior, such as stalking, or in a situation involving slander or libel. What you may not be aware of is that the Cease and Desist letter can be a valuable tool for a creative artist to protect his or her intellectual property from being improperly used.
More and more musicians have turned to the Internet to market their music, providing free downloads and streaming the album for their fans. This is an effective try-before-you-buy strategy, but it leaves a creative artist susceptible to piracy. You've worked too hard on your intellectual property to let someone else profit from your efforts and you've registered your work for copyright protection, but a struggling musician may not always be in a financial position to pursue legal action. A Cease and Desist letter can be the perfect solution -- it's free to send, and it threatens legal action, letting your infringer know that you're serious about your work.
A Cease and Desist letter's precise wording is not important, so long as it contains the following information:
The copyright registration information with your name (or the name of the person with the claim) as legal owner
The details of the infringement, such as the store at which you found your music illegally sold, for instance
A demand for the infringement to cease
Threat of legal action if your letter is ignored.
But what about that musician who isn't prepared to bring legal action? Sometimes, pointing out someone's illegal behavior and showing that you're aware of it is all it takes to get someone to stop. With the proof of your legal ownership in their hands and possibly costly legal repercussion facing them, will an infringer take that risk?
