A cease and desist order is a legal term used to stop a person or entity from engaging in a particular activity. It can be issued by a court or judge, or by individuals and lawyers through a cease and desist letter. It can be used in scenarios where an activity is found to be illegal or in violation of copyright or harassment laws. Legal action may be taken if the order is ignored.
Stop and desist may be called “stop and don’t do it anymore”, and is usually a legal term that can be used by courts or sometimes by individuals and lawyers to stop a person or entity from engaging in a particular activity. When issued by a court or judge, it is called a cease and desist order. The other context in which this can be used is if a person, possibly with the help of a lawyer, writes a cease and desist letter, where legal action is threatened if the person (or company) does not stop engaging in a particular activity.
There are many possible scenarios in which a judge might issue a cease and desist order. Sometimes this request is temporary. A person asked to stop an activity can only be asked to stop until a hearing can determine the legality of the activity. If the person’s acts are truly found to be outside the law, the order can become permanent. In other circumstances, the person or entity involved in the activity is clearly doing something illegal, and no hearing is required to determine this. In such cases, judges at various levels of the court may be empowered to issue an order prohibiting ongoing behavior.
Another use of cease and desist is when people write letters to other people asking them to stop engaging in a certain activity. This could be a violation of an individual’s or company’s copyright, it could be a request to stop libel or libel, or it could be due to unlawful harassment. For example, a collection agency, in many circumstances, cannot legally contact a person more than once, after receiving a request, the company refrains from further contact with the person who owes money. Sometimes the matter is so serious that it needs to be enforced by the courts, such as harassment that threatens violence, but usually when people write these letters there is just an implication that continuing an activity will result in legal action.
A common form of these letters is to stop further copyright infringement, especially on the Internet. Companies like wiseGEEK may need to write these letters when they discover that their articles have been copied and used without permission on other people’s or companies’ websites. An initial step in achieving this is to ask people to stop by letter. This can be followed by legal action if the letter is ignored.
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