What to do before you respond
Preserve everything. That means the file itself, where it came from, the invoice or license or download page, the contractor agreement, the correspondence, and anything sitting in a shared drive or a chat thread about how it was made. Deleting material after a claim arrives usually damages your position more than the underlying use did, so nothing should be destroyed and nothing should be quietly edited. Whether to take the content down at all is a separate question that depends on the situation, and it is worth a short conversation first, since pulling a product page carries costs of its own. And do not reply in anger, because a denial written late at night often becomes the other side's most useful document.
How the accusation gets evaluated
A copyright infringement defense usually begins with questions that have little to do with how the two works look side by side. Does the accuser actually own what they claim, or are they an agent, an heir, or a company that bought a catalog with gaps in its paperwork? Did your use involve copying at all, or did two people arrive at similar material on their own? Is there a license somewhere in your chain, from a stock service, a former employee, a contractor, or a platform's own terms, that nobody thought to look for? Copyright law also recognizes exceptions for certain kinds of uses, though they are weighed on the particular facts rather than applied as a checklist. In our experience a fair number of demand letters do not survive the first of those questions.
Platform removals and court claims are separate tracks
A notice sent to a host, a marketplace, or a social platform runs through that platform's own process, and the immediate consequence is usually that material comes down and an account collects a strike. A lawsuit is a different matter with different consequences, and one does not automatically follow from the other. Counter-notice procedures exist, but sending one carries real implications and is not a routine form to fill in. We look at both tracks together, because a business that fixes a listing while ignoring a demand letter, or that argues with a demand letter while its store account is quietly being closed, has solved only half of the problem. In many matters the workable resolution is a license going forward rather than a ruling about the past.
