Chapter 6 — The Licence That Never Existed
The unsigned document occupied twenty-three pages and transferred everything.
Ottilie read it at Felicity’s conference table shortly after seven the next morning.
Copyright, design right, adaptation right, archive access, moral-rights waivers, future colourways, digital reproductions and uses “in all media now known or later developed”.
Her tracked objections remained in the margin.
NOT AGREED appeared beside perpetual. ATTRIBUTION ESSENTIAL beside the waiver.
On the final page, the signature line beneath her legal name was blank.
Kit’s signature appeared opposite it.
“He signed first,” Ottilie said.
“The company sent it as an offer,” Felicity replied. “His signature doesn’t accept terms on your behalf.”
Felicity’s assistant built the rights chronology from ordinary work messages. Ottilie approved dye tests, fittings and individual samples. Each approval named the object and stage. Harcourt’s lawyers had gathered the messages into a pattern they called continuing consent.
“If I approved a hem, they say I approved the collection,” Ottilie said.
“They say the marriage and course of dealing supply what each message does not.”
Ottilie opened an email from two years earlier. Kit had asked whether a scarf could travel to Tokyo. She replied, One press loan, no reproduction. The scarf returned; the image later appeared on shopping bags.
Felicity added it to the application. Familiar breach was not a licence merely because no one sued the first time.
The room carried the stale warmth of an office used through the night. Felicity’s assistant had brought toothbrushes, clean shirts and coffee that tasted of cardboard. Devika had returned to the dyehouse at midnight after Ottilie promised to telephone before court.
On the wall, yesterday’s chronology had spread into three lines. One followed physical originals. One followed scans. The third followed what Harcourt & Bell had told retailers, the press and Marwick Cale.
The lines agreed only at the point where the company’s claims became public.
Felicity placed a one-page letter above the unsigned assignment. “This is the licence they have.”
Ottilie knew it by sight. She had written the first draft herself after a technician requested six sample scans for colour testing.
Permission was limited to internal development samples. No commercial manufacture, publication or third-party access. Any expanded use required a separately executed agreement identifying the work, term, territory, fee and attribution.
The company had countersigned. The permitted sample period ended four months ago.
“They may argue conduct,” Felicity said. “You attended fittings. You corrected repeats. You knew cloth was being ordered.”
“I invoiced development services and reserved rights on every invoice.”
“Yes. Their argument is weaker because of it, not impossible. Courts dislike pretending months of shared work didn’t happen.”
Ottilie looked at the acquisition warranty Felicity had obtained from a retailer’s disclosure pack. The relevant schedule described all textile artwork as proprietary house material or validly assigned commissioned work.
“The court will see this today?”
“If the judge accepts urgency.”
“The livestream is still available.”
“We captured it. Retailers have campaign files. Manufacturing continues unless somebody has chosen caution.” Felicity turned the application towards her.
“The order we seek is broad. It stops sale, display, manufacture and copying of the identified works. If the court later decides Harcourt & Bell had permission, you may be responsible for losses caused by the injunction.”
“How much?”
“Potentially ruinous. We will ask the court to limit any undertaking because of the rights imbalance, but I will not tell you the risk is ceremonial.”
Ottilie’s personal account could support six months without income if she left the Holland Park house. Her promised studio loan had not yet drawn down. The paintings and lengths in her private archive had value only if somebody still believed her name beside them.
If she waited, the company would ship garments carrying Saskia’s label to stores across four continents.
“File it,” she said.
Felicity watched her for a moment. “This is not punishment.”
“No. It is the door they put my work behind.”
Before counsel could give the undertaking, Ottilie had to disclose what stood behind it. Savings. The undrawn studio facility. Two framed silks held by galleries. Her share of the joint household account, which Felicity excluded until ownership and access were clear.
The bank manager joined by video and confirmed the studio loan could not be treated as available cash. If the injunction caused loss and Ottilie became liable, the bank reserved the right to withdraw before drawdown.
“So the application itself may close the studio finance,” Ottilie said.
“It may,” Felicity replied.
Counsel proposed asking the judge to accept a capped undertaking based on Ottilie’s actual means. Harcourt & Bell would argue that a person unable to compensate it should not stop a global collection.
Ottilie opened the folder containing the twelve-month studio plan. Ventilation, rent, two salaries and a cutting table waited in clean columns. She had postponed the project twice to finish Harcourt work. If the loan vanished, there would be no independent premises this year.
“Can we ask the court to make them hold a reserve for my losses too?”
“We can ask for costs and preservation. Interim proceedings do not make either side whole in advance.”
Ottilie signed the financial statement. She would not claim to be able to bear a corporate loss in order to appear powerful. The imbalance belonged in the hearing with everything else.
Felicity’s assistant scanned the final page. “Once this is filed, the company sees the account figures.”
Kit had never known exactly how much Ottilie kept in personal savings. Marriage had allowed privacy because his income made emergency planning seem unnecessary. Now the company would know the limit while arguing she should risk it.
“Redact only the account number,” Ottilie said. “File the amount.”
The hearing was listed at noon in a courtroom too small for the number of lawyers Harcourt & Bell brought.
Ottilie sat behind Felicity with the blue archive box beneath her chair. Kit occupied the opposite side of the aisle. He had changed his suit. She knew because yesterday’s had a narrow chalk stripe visible only at close range, and today’s was plain navy. The knowledge felt domestic and useless.
He looked at her when she entered. He didn’t approach.
The company’s barrister began by describing a long creative collaboration inside a marriage and a fashion house.
Ottilie heard her work translated into shared intention.
She had attended meetings, approved prototypes and accepted fees.
She had allowed scans onto company servers.
Harcourt & Bell, the barrister said, had reasonably relied on a course of conduct showing consent.
Felicity passed a note to counsel. Ottilie could read only the final words: NOT THE PLEADED CASE.
The judge asked for the executed assignment.
Silence moved along the company’s row.
The barrister supplied the signed consultancy agreement, then the sampling letter, then the final draft Kit had signed alone.
“Where is the claimant’s signature?” the judge asked.
“The company’s case is that subsequent conduct granted an implied licence.”
“A licence of what scope?”
The answer required several sentences. Worldwide manufacture, campaign publication, retail, derivative works and brand archive use. Each right exceeded the sampling letter that remained in the bundle.
The judge turned to the public statement. “And the company’s position is that the claimant, who allegedly licensed this material by conduct, stole it from an employee?”
The barrister said the statement concerned disputed provenance and was issued before full review.
Ottilie felt Kit’s gaze across the aisle. She kept her attention on the grain of the wooden desk. Somebody had cut a shallow V into it and filled the mark with blue ink.
Felicity’s counsel placed the early photographs before the judge. Orchard Ashes above Ottilie’s old table. Night Iris in a paper repeat book. Courier labels. Invoice reservations. The scan metadata showed her creator code and dates. Saskia’s internal registration, three days old, arrived last.
The company objected to deciding authorship at an urgent hearing.
“I am not deciding it,” the judge said. “I am deciding whether there is a serious issue to be tried and what must happen until that issue can be determined.”
The collection’s commercial scale became the next argument.
Harcourt & Bell listed orders, factory hours, retailer commitments and the damage of a halt during fashion week.
Felicity’s counsel answered with the damage of multiplying unauthorised copies while public allegations destroyed the creator’s ability to license her own work.
When the judge rose to consider the documents, Ottilie went into the corridor.
Kit followed a minute later, stopping beyond the distance Felicity’s assistant had established with two empty chairs.
“Withdraw the application,” he said quietly. “I will give an undertaking to preserve the originals and suspend Saskia.”
“Will you retract the statement?”
“The buyer has agreed to review a replacement licence this afternoon.”
“That was not my question.”
“A retraction before they approve the structure ends the transaction.”
Ottilie turned the paper cup between her palms. The seam had begun to soften.
“You are asking for the same forty-eight hours again.”
“Thirty-six now.”
The precision was so entirely Kit that she almost laughed.
“Did you tell Marwick Cale I refused the assignment?”
“Not before signing the warranty.”
“Did you tell them this morning?”
He didn’t answer quickly enough.
“Then go back inside,” she said.
“The injunction will stop orders unrelated to Saskia’s registration.”
“If they use my artwork, they are not unrelated.”
“The factory cannot separate every application today.”
“That is what happens when you remove a maker’s name before tracking her rights.”
Felicity came out of the courtroom. “We are being called back.”
Kit stepped aside. Ottilie passed him without touching the sleeve of his coat.
The judge granted the order at two twenty-seven.
Harcourt & Bell was prohibited from manufacturing, supplying, marketing, exhibiting or further reproducing twenty-nine identified textile designs pending return.
The livestream and official show replay had to be disabled.
Retailers and factories had to be notified immediately.
Originals and working records were to be preserved.
No archive material could be moved, relabelled or copied except for the proceedings.
The order didn’t decide final ownership. It didn’t clear Ottilie in every headline. It stopped the work from travelling farther while those questions remained.
The judge accepted a limited undertaking in damages, subject to financial evidence, and ordered the company to deliver access logs and the disputed archive inventory within forty-eight hours.
Kit’s lawyers asked for a stay until market close.
The request was refused.
Outside court, Mina Dawes waited beyond the press barrier with six other reporters. Felicity advised one sentence and no questions.
Ottilie stopped on the steps.
“The court has ordered Harcourt & Bell to stop using the disputed work and preserve the complete record,” she said. “I will present my evidence in the proceedings.”
“Did your husband know you owned it?” somebody called.
Ottilie walked on.
In Felicity’s taxi, notifications began arriving from retailers.
A department store in Paris had hidden its campaign page.
A New York buyer requested immediate collection instructions.
The fashion-week organiser removed the replay.
A Macclesfield production manager acknowledged the stop order and asked which cut lengths had to be isolated.
Then came a copied message sent to every wholesale account.
By order of the High Court, all distribution, display and manufacture of the identified Inheritance designs is suspended with immediate effect.
Felicity read over Ottilie’s shoulder. “They have complied quickly.”
Ottilie watched the list of recipients continue beyond the bottom of the screen. Every order already packed, every image already supplied, every piece of cloth waiting beneath a cutter’s hand had acquired the same instruction.
Stop.
The order also required Ottilie to give a cross-undertaking for losses if the injunction later proved wrong. Felicity read the amount Harcourt sought as security. It exceeded the value of Ottilie’s flat deposit, savings and every invoice due to her.
The judge reduced it after Harcourt failed to explain why its own unsigned agreement valued the disputed rights at less than half the claimed weekly loss. Ottilie still pledged most of her liquid assets and accepted that a failed case could erase her independent start.
The injunction was not a cost-free declaration of truth. It was a decision to place what remained of her money behind the word stop.