Free tool
Cease and desist letter template generator
Three letters for the three things that get taken from an online store: your product photographs, your brand name, and your product itself. Pick one, fill in what you know, and the letter writes as you type.
Your side
The date these photographs were first published. The date you first sold under this name. The date you first sold this product. Write it out, so nobody has to guess at a date format.
Who you are writing to
The evidence
The page carrying the copy, not the store homepage. Add more than one on separate lines.
Name it exactly. Which photographs, which words, which part of the name.
The deadline and the sign-off
Seven to fourteen is the common range. Shorter reads as theater and gets ignored.
Your letter
[YOUR COMPANY LETTERHEAD]
[TODAY'S DATE]
Sent by email to [THEIR EMAIL] and by certified mail, return receipt
requested, to:
[RECIPIENT NAME]
[THEIR BUSINESS NAME]
[STREET, CITY, STATE, ZIP, COUNTRY]
Re: Unauthorized use of [YOUR BRAND] product photographs
Dear [RECIPIENT NAME]:
1. Who we are
[YOUR COMPANY] sells [YOUR BRAND] products at [YOURSTORE.COM].
2. Our rights
The product photographs on [YOURSTORE.COM] were made for [YOUR COMPANY] and
are owned by [YOUR COMPANY]. They were first published on [FIRST PUBLISHED
DATE]. Copyright exists from the moment a photograph is created and fixed,
and registration is not required for ownership.
3. What you are doing
On [DATE YOU RECORDED IT] we recorded the following use of our photographs:
Page: [EXACT URL, NOT THE STORE HOMEPAGE]
Listing or item number: [LISTING OR ITEM NUMBER]
What was taken: [WHAT THEY TOOK, DESCRIBED EXACTLY]
A dated screenshot and an archived copy of that page are attached.
4. Why it is a problem
You are reproducing and displaying our photographs without a license. Under
17 U.S.C. § 106 the rights to reproduce the work and to display it publicly
belong to the copyright owner, and we have granted you neither. Where a work
was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before the infringement began,
or within three months of first publication, 17 U.S.C. § 504(c) allows an
award of statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 per work, rising to as much as
$150,000 per work where the court finds the infringement willful.
5. What we ask you to do
Within 10 days of the date of this letter, please:
a. Remove our photographs from the page above and from every other page,
listing, advertisement and profile you control.
b. Delete the copies you hold, including stored and cached copies.
c. Stop using our photographs in advertising, metadata and social posts.
d. Confirm in writing what you have done.
6. If we do not hear from you
If our photographs are still in use after that date, we will report them to
the platform and to the hosting provider, and consider the further steps
available to us under the Copyright Act.
7. Reservation of rights
Nothing in this letter waives or limits any right or remedy available to
[YOUR COMPANY], all of which are expressly reserved.
We would rather settle this by email than by any other route.
Sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR TITLE], [YOUR COMPANY]
[YOUR EMAIL] · [YOUR PHONE]
Attached: dated screenshot of the page, archived copy of the page, and a
side by side of our original and the copy.
This generator produces a template, not legal advice. Knockoff is not a law firm. When there is real money at stake, or a lawyer on the other side, hire an attorney.
What a cease and desist letter can and cannot do
A cease and desist letter is a private demand from you to them. It is not binding, no law requires the recipient to answer it or to stop, and you do not need an attorney to write one. Only a court can order anybody to do anything. The letter creates a dated record. That record is the reason to send it.
The strongest reason sits in the trademark statute. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1111, an owner who does not display the registered symbol next to the mark cannot recover profits or damages from an infringer unless that infringer had actual notice of the registration. A dated letter, delivered and receipted, is how you create that notice. Every day before the letter is a day of use you probably cannot be paid for.
On the copyright side the record does quieter work. The Ninth Circuit's model jury instruction on willful copyright infringement defines it as the copier knowing the conduct was infringement, or acting in reckless disregard of it. Continued use after a dated notice is evidence a court can weigh toward that finding, and the other side can still answer it with a reasonable good-faith belief that the use was lawful. A letter does not establish willfulness on its own. It documents that the copier was told, and a court can weigh that record.
The money attached to willfulness only exists on a timetable. Statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c) run from $750 to $30,000 per work, as low as $200 for an innocent infringer and as high as $150,000 where the court finds willfulness, all at the court's discretion. Under 17 U.S.C. § 412 that whole range, plus attorney's fees, is available only if the work was registered before the infringement started or within three months of first publication. Copyright exists the moment the photograph is taken. Statutory damages and attorney's fees require registration before the infringement began, or within three months of first publication, so registering after you find the copy is too late for those remedies. Actual damages and the copier's profits are still available.
If the mark you are defending is not registered, the letter still works but it argues differently. The guide covers that case in full, including sending a demand letter without a registered mark.
Send the platform report first
The letter is the last of four moves, not the first. Everything above it acts on the copy without the copycat agreeing to anything, which is the whole point. This is the order Knockoff's own enforcement runs in, and it is the order to work in yourself.
1
The host
2
The registrar
3
The payment processor
4
The letter
1. The host or the platform. If the copy sits on a marketplace listing or a hosted store, report it where it lives. A marketplace will pull a listing on a valid report, and a host that wants to keep its legal shelter has to act on a valid copyright notice. Neither one needs the seller's cooperation. Our guide to where each platform takes a stolen-photo report has the form for each one, and the notice that gets photos pulled has the wording.
2. The registrar. When the whole domain exists to look like you, rather than one page carrying your photographs, the registrar's abuse contact is the right door. Registrars publish one under their accreditation agreement.
3. The payment processor. A store taking card payments answers to somebody for that privilege. A processor cares a great deal about a merchant selling goods it does not have, and this rung is often the one that ends a copycat store rather than moving it.
4. The letter. Which leaves the cases the first three rungs do not reach. A direct seller running their own checkout, with no platform sitting in the middle. An operator who has come back three times under a new name and needs to hear from you by name. A US business with an address, a reputation and something to lose. Those are the letters worth writing, and they are also the letters most likely to be answered.
One more rule: put a trademark claim in a letter only when you have a registration to point at. Photographs give you a copyright claim whether or not you have ever filed anything, which is why the copyright letter is the one most stores end up sending.
How to send a cease and desist letter
Freeze the evidence before you send. A full-page screenshot with the URL and the date in frame, an archived copy of the page, and a side by side of your original against theirs. The page can be edited within an hour of your email landing, and a demand about a page nobody can load is a demand you lose.
Then send it twice on the same day. Email to the address on their site, and paper to the business address. No statute requires either method, so the reason to use both is proof. USPS Certified Mail costs $5.55, and adding Return Receipt is $2.91 for the electronic version or $4.65 for the hardcopy card, on the USPS extra-services price list as of August 18, 2026. Certified Mail gives you a mailing receipt and a delivery record, and Return Receipt gets you the recipient's signature. That signature is what turns "we told them" into a date you can show. Keep the receipt, the letter and the evidence in one file.
Plenty of copycat stores have no address you can mail. An anonymous storefront on a two-week-old domain, run from overseas, with a contact form and nothing else, will not sign for anything. Send the letter through the contact form so it exists, then go back to the first three rungs above, because those act on the store without anyone reading your mail. Having the notice and the proof assembled for you is the paid version of that work.
Can a cease and desist letter backfire?
Sometimes, and the exposure scales with who you write to. A demand letter can create a real dispute between the parties, and once there is one, the recipient can go to court first and ask for a declaration that they are not infringing. The Supreme Court set the standard for that in MedImmune v. Genentech (2007): a substantial controversy of sufficient immediacy, judged on all the circumstances. Your letter can be what supplies the controversy.
Being dragged into their courtroom is a narrower risk than it sounds. The traditional rule, set out in a 2010 survey of the case law published in IDEA: The Intellectual Property Law Review, is that sending a letter into a state does not by itself give that state's courts personal jurisdiction over you, absent other contacts with the forum.
So write to the seller, not to the people who buy from them. Claim only the right you actually hold. Keep the tone flat, because every letter should be written on the assumption it will be photographed and posted. For a letter to an anonymous overseas dropshipper, this risk barely exists in practice. Writing to a funded business with counsel, it is real, and that is the letter an attorney should send. The guide goes deeper into the two ways a demand letter comes back at you, with the cases.
Questions about cease and desist letters
What should I attach to a cease and desist letter? +
Attach proof of the copy and proof of your right. For the copy: a full-page dated screenshot with the URL in frame, an archived copy of the page, the listing or item number, and a side by side of your original against theirs. For the right: your registration certificate if you have one, or the earliest dated evidence of your own use, such as the first published listing page or the invoice for the photo shoot. Freeze all of it before you send, because the page can be edited within an hour of your email landing.
Does this generator store what I type? +
No. The letter is built in your browser as you type. Nothing you enter is sent to a server or saved. Closing the tab discards it.
What changes in the letter if my trademark is not registered? +
The block that proves your right changes, and so does the statute. A registered letter gives the registration number, the registration date and the goods it covers, and points at the USPTO record. An unregistered letter has to build the right the long way: what you sell, under what name, since when, and where you trade. It cites 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1) instead of § 1114(1)(a), and it uses TM after your name rather than the registered symbol, which under 15 U.S.C. § 1111 belongs only to a federally registered mark. Pick the unregistered path in the form and the generator makes all three swaps.
Which platforms take a report instead of a letter? +
The major marketplaces all run their own intellectual property reporting programs, and a report there acts on the listing without the seller agreeing to anything. A copy on a marketplace or on a hosted store almost always moves faster through the platform than through the mail. The letter is the tool for a direct seller with their own checkout, an operator who keeps coming back, and any case where no platform sits between you and them.
Why is the download a .txt file and not a PDF? +
Because the letter belongs on your letterhead, in your own document, with your evidence attached. A .txt file pastes cleanly into a word processor or an email and leaves the formatting to you. A PDF would freeze a layout that is not yours and make the letter harder to edit before you send it.
One letter is an afternoon of work. Finding every listing that deserves one is continuous work. Knockoff watches your Shopify catalog across the marketplaces and the open web and hands you a confirmed case with the evidence already assembled. Find every listing worth sending this to.
Sources
- Cornell Legal Information Institute, Wex on cease and desist letters, for what the letter is and is not
- California State University Long Beach Legal Resource Center, cease and desist letters defined, for the elements a well-formed letter carries and for writing one without an attorney
- 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), for the statutory damages range, and 17 U.S.C. § 412, for the registration timing that has to be met first
- United States Copyright Office, general FAQ, for copyright existing on creation and registration being voluntary
- Ninth Circuit model civil jury instruction 17.39, for what willfulness means and what rebuts it
- 15 U.S.C. § 1111, for the actual-notice requirement when the registered symbol is not displayed
- United States Patent and Trademark Office, trademark basics, for when TM is usable and when the registered symbol is
- MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118 (2007), for the declaratory judgment standard, and the 2010 survey on demand letters and personal jurisdiction, 50 IDEA 777 (2010)
- United States Postal Service, extra services, for the Certified Mail and Return Receipt prices
Sources verified August 18, 2026. Knockoff is not a law firm and this is general information, not legal advice.
