Chapter 16 - Victor’s lawyers had warned him
Discovery produced a memo from Victor’s intellectual-property counsel dated before Ashes premiered.
It said:
The Daniel Rowan general services agreement may support an argument that certain materials are works made for hire, but The Lantern Sea appears to have been developed without a clearly documented commission and may fall outside the intended scope of the services provision.
Then:
Recommended course: negotiate explicit posthumous license with estate before publication of substantial adapted material.
That memo changed everything.
Victor had been warned.
He did negotiate.
With me.
The settlement.
His lawyers argued:
Nora accepted payment and released the dispute.
My lawyers answered:
The settlement might resolve monetary claims around Ashes, but Victor’s public claim of sole authorship remained false if Daniel was legally a co-author or source composer, and the settlement wording did not expressly transfer Daniel’s authorship credit or moral recognition.
U.S. copyright law does not provide broad moral rights for musical works the way some jurisdictions do.
That complicated our emotional argument.
But copyright ownership, contractual interpretation, false attribution in certain commercial contexts, and estate rights still mattered.
We were no longer telling a fairy tale where one handwritten page automatically destroyed a billionaire.
We had a real case.
Hard.
Expensive.
May you like
Specific.
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