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hello and welcome to another episode of Hawthorne law TV my name is Jim Hart I'm your host again today and today I want to talk to you about five common cease and desist letter mistakes that I see people make all the time cease and desist letters are one of the most common things that I get asked to do as an attorney and so I want to share with you five common mistakes that I found that people make with regard to cease and desist letter so here we go let's start with number one is the first major mistake that I see people make with cease and desist letters is that they don't actually hire a lawyer to draft it for them now this makes no sense to me if you you know want to take the time and effort to put together a cease and desist letter doesn't it just make sense that you're going to actually hire a lawyer to do that for you because if it's coming from you it's not going to have any meat on it and and if you actually want somebody to stop doing something that they're maybe doing illegally or maybe they're violating your intellectual property rights it makes sense to actually have a lawyer draft that letter so that's the first mistake I see people make second mistake I see people make is they send them out when they don't actually have anything to protect maybe your brand-new start up maybe you're only in business for a couple months and you haven't filed anything you haven't registered any of your intellectual property and but yet you're sending out a cease and desist letter to somebody who's probably in the same position that you are maybe even a little bit further down the line than you are and you're asking them to stop violating your intellectual property perhaps or or doing something else chances are even though you may have common law rights to some intellectual property that because you haven't registered anything you're facing a long legal battle anyway so there's really no point to sending these things out until you actually have something to protect the third big mistake that I see people make is that they send these cease and desist letters out to anyone and everyone you know anyone who is a potential competitor of them that might be somehow infringing on the intellectual property they're gonna want to send a letter to and that's just a mistake you need to understand it single time you send our season to this letter you're putting your mark on the Internet you know you're running the risk that somebody's going to take that letter and post it online and say negative things about you or your company perhaps maybe it's going to clue somebody in that actually owns the rights to your own proposed trademark that maybe you haven't even registered yet that you're actually stealing their intellectual property so you want to be very careful and I recommend not sending these things out to anyone in everyone especially when you're a young startup all right the fourth major mistake that I see people make is empty threats and basically what this means is they're they're telling people to you know stop doing something or they're going to file a lawsuit within 30 days well if you have no intention of filing a lawsuit it really doesn't make sense to send a cease-and-desist that are telling somebody that you're going to file a lawsuit against them you're basically asking for a fight with a bully that you don't know anything about and maybe they're weaker than you maybe they're stronger than you you don't really know and so when you go ahead and start sending these things out without really knowing what you're going to be able to to back them up that's kind of a big mistake and a red flag in my opinion all right the fifth major mistake that I see people make with cease and desist letters is that they don't really have a plan they don't really know why they're sending them out they think that by saying these things out it's going to scare somebody to stop doing something nine times out of ten that's not the case you know and especially if it's coming from you and not a lawyer you know they're just going to look at you as an amateur and you know so you're basically just harming your business reputation in the long run so unless you have a legitimate reason for sending out C so does this letter I recommend not doing that at least in the startup phases of your business now this is not to say that there's not a time in a place for cease and desist letter there certainly is and in my opinion here's the steps that I would take before I would say now to see some sis letter for a client the first thing I want to make sure that person is doing is registering all their intellectual property with the US Patent and Trademark Office that's number one so you know filing their trademarks filing their copyrights you know filing their patents if they have patents making sure you're doing everything on the up-and-up online because the last thing you want to do is send out some sort of season to sister and have somebody use that as ammunition against you in a trademark infringement lawsuit along with that you're going to make sure that you have conducted a comprehensive name search to make sure that you are not violent anybody else's intellectual property now this doesn't mean you got there in the hire somebody m5 or for five bucks to do a name church with for you on the US Patent and Trademark Office that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is you need to hire a lawyer or an outside service to conduct a comprehensive name search that means the US Patent and Trademark Office is that means Google common-law searches perhaps international searches you want to make sure that you're not violating anybody else's intellectual property before you send one of these out next you want to research the potential violator you want to know who you're dealing with is this somebody that's been involved in a lot of lawsuits maybe they have deep pockets maybe they're subsidiary of a bigger corporation that you need to be aware of are they somebody who just open up their business and is brand new and perhaps they're not going to be around in a couple years so what's the point in suing them now or even sending a cease and desist letter now you want to know something about the potential infringer of your intellectual property along with that you want to do a complete and thorough review of what this competitor is doing to make sure they are actually violating your intellectual property because if they're not sending a cease and desist letter is just going to be a futile exercise for you and then finally you want to have a long and serious talk with an attorney to make sure this is the right course of action for you because in some cases it is in many cases it's not so I recommend talking to an attorney and having a serious discussion about what it's going to mean to send out a cease and desist letter before you actually go ahead and do that so that's all I've got for today make sure to follow us at halter on law that net where we post new articles videos etc as well as on this YouTube channel make sure you hit the subscribe button and check us out we'll be posting new videos on a pretty regular basis here going forward so