Licencre

Licencre is a fictional regulatory framework used to govern the creation, use, and distribution of writings produced with special inks. The term blends license and encre (French for ink) and appears in worldbuilding, fantasy literature, and tabletop role-playing communities.

Within its in-universe definitions, licencre regimes are administered by licensing authorities that grant licenses to scribes, printers, and institutions to use particular inks and to produce certain classes of documents. Most licencre systems require documents to bear a unique seal or signature linking them to a registry entry, and licenses specify allowed activities such as copying, sale, translation, and archival storage. Ink types are often tied to properties such as permanence, invisibility, or magical traceability; licenses may cover only the use of the ink in specified contexts to prevent abuse or counterfeiting.

Rights and obligations accompany licencre: authors retain ownership of content; license terms define duration, royalties, and limitations; registries enable provenance checks and dispute resolution. Enforcement mechanisms include penalties for counterfeiting, forged seals, or unlicensed production, along with courts or guilds that interpret license terms.

In fiction, licencre provides a device to explore themes of authenticity, contractual obligation, and control over knowledge, often driving plots about forged documents, magical contracts, or governance of scribal professions. See also license, intellectual property, magical law, ink magic.