Dealing with alleged infringement
You may be accused of infringing someone else's IP rights. You will usually find out about the alleged infringement via a letter of demand.
If you are accused of infringing another's IP, you could consider seeking the advice of an IP professional.
Stop the infringing conduct
If possible, you should immediately stop any conduct that is alleged to be infringing, without admissions, until you have obtained legal advice that confirms your rights to continue.
By stopping the conduct you will remove the major impetus for the owner of the IP rights to commence legal action - to obtain an interim injunction.
It will also prevent you from creating further infringements that could be the subject of a claim for damages.
Obtain legal advice
Many threats of infringement will not be able to succeed if they are examined closely.
This could be because the IP rights do not exist, the rights are owned by a person other than the one making the threat against you, or infringement cannot be proved.
Unjustified or invalid claims of copyright infringement are prohibited under statutes such as the Copyright Act 1968 and may cause the person issuing the threat to be liable to compensate you for the consequences of making the threat.
Responding to an empty threat
You may receive a threat of infringement that cannot result in successful infringement action. For example, you may receive a threat about IP rights that you clearly own and have documented evidence of ownership.
Such threats can cause disruption to your business: you may have ceased production of specific items while you investigated the claims contained in a letter of demand, and incurred losses as a result.
You should respond to the person issuing the threat and ask them to give an undertaking not to repeat the threat, and pay compensation to you for any loss you have suffered as a result.
Last Updated: 13/12/2012
