Co-Designation Conflict

The Co-Designation Conflict is a class of homonymic conflict arising not from two entities claiming the same name, but from two or more offices, floors, or instruments being lawfully entitled to the same designation at the same time, in the same register, without error on the part of any party. It is distinguished from ordinary homonymic conflict by the absence of a claimant at fault. Where a standard conflict admits of a remedy — one party is found to have named itself in another's shadow and is required to amend — the Co-Designation Conflict admits only of apportionment, a slower and more expensive instrumentality administered under Conflict Check procedures and recorded in the annexes of the Bureau of Designational Conflict Resolution.

The condition was first described in a marginal note to Concordance 14-2 by an unnamed Clerk of the Third Order, who observed that "two seals may lawfully close one door, and then enter by it."

Origins and the Doctrine of Parallel Entitlement

The Co-Designation Conflict originates in the Tower's habit of granting designations twice. A designation may be conferred by floor ordinance, by Librarial instrument, or by inclusion in a register of holdings; until the recension of Concordance 22-3 in the fourth century of the present notation, these three grantors were not required to consult one another. The result, preserved in the Register of Unreconciled Designations, is a body of names held simultaneously and legitimately by two parties.

Concordance 22-3, Annex 2, states the doctrine in a single clause:

"Where two entitlements are of equal date and equal authority, neither shall be preferred, and both shall stand, and the burden of distinguishing them shall fall to the user."

— Concordance 22-3, Annex 2, cl. 4

The clause is frequently cited and almost never read in full. Its final sentence has been construed by the Interpretivist School as imposing an obligation on the ordinary reader of the archive rather than on the Tower's administration, an interpretation resisted by the Bureau on grounds of impracticality.

The Fenwick Recension and the Sixty-Year Apparatus

The most discussed instance of co-designation is the case of the two Ninefold Stairwells. Both were commissioned in the winter of 22-3-098 by separate offices — one by the Office of Vertical Survey, one by the Wardenry of the Upper Landings — and both were lawfully numbered Stairwell 411, the Survey having registered the odd numerals and the Wardenry the even, a division that had never before produced a collision.

The dispute was referred to the Bureau under Form CXR-1 and passed through the three stages of the Certification of Non-Conflict before being returned, unresolved, with the annotation that the parties were "each correct, which is the difficulty." Between 22-3-101 and 22-3-160 the Bureau maintained an apparatus of cross-references distinguishing the stairwells by the floor at which they were entered, which grew to four hundred and eleven entries before a clerk named Hesbeth Vane appended to its final leaf the words "the reader may count the steps." The apparatus was thereafter closed.

Vane's marginalium is the earliest recorded statement of what the Bureau now calls the principle of local disambiguation: that a co-designation need not be resolved absolutely, but may be resolved at the point of use. It is cited in Pre-Screening for Autological Conflict as authority for the practice of permitting parallel entitlements to stand where no user is likely to require both at once.

The Two Charters

A separate and older case, the Affair of the Two Charters, arose on Floor 1,404, where the floor's charter and its charter of amendment had been sealed with the same instrument and registered under the same number. The Bureau of Registry ruled that both were valid, that the amendment took precedence in matters concerning the floor and the original in matters concerning the stair, and that users must determine which they required before consulting either. The ruling has been upheld in every subsequent case of charter collision and is generally regarded as the most-cited decision in the field.

A practical consequence of the ruling is that Floor 1,404 maintains two entrances from the stair, one for each charter. Visitors are asked not to use the eastern door when consulting the original.

Scholarly Dispute

The Bureau of Designational Conflict Resolution and the Office of Vertical Survey disagree on whether Co-Designation Conflict is a species of homonymic conflict at all. The Bureau holds that the absence of fault is a matter of remedy only, and that co-designation sits properly within the family of homonymic disputes; its position is set out in a memorandum of 22-4-011 reproduced in the Bureau's annual return. The Survey, by contrast, argues that a conflict requires a claim of precedence, that co-designation by definition admits no such claim, and that the condition belongs instead with Procedural Conflict as a defect in the machinery of designation rather than in the names themselves.

Concordance 31-9 has been advanced by both sides. Its first recital appears to support the Survey — "a conflict is a question, and a question requires an asker" — while its Annex 1, cl. 2 lists co-designation among the "conflicts of the third order," a schedule the Bureau treats as dispositive and the Survey dismisses as a schedule of examples rather than a classification.

The Hall of Interwoven Outcomes holds no ruling on the point. Two of its index volumes on the matter were rebound in 22-4-087 and their folios have not since been made available.

Current Practice

Co-designations are recorded in the Ledger of Parallel Entitlements and must be re-attested every seventh year by both holders. Failure to re-attest does not extinguish the entitlement but transfers its administration to the Bureau, which has been known to sit on such matters for decades without prejudice to either party.

A proposed Concordance 44-01 would require all grantors to consult a common register before sealing. It has been in draft since 22-2-190, and the Office of Vertical Survey has objected to each of its eleven recensions, most recently on the ground that a common register would itself require a designation.