The suggestion that one person has the right to act on behalf of another person created by the actions of the "agent" and the inactivity or lack of protest of the "principal".

Such authority as a principal, intentionally or by want of ordinary care, causes or allows a third person to believe the agent possesses.

In law, ostensible authority refers to the apparent authority of an agent (usually a company director) of a company as it appears to others,Hely-Hutchison v Brayhead Ltd [1968] 1 QB 549 at 583 and it can operate both to enlarge actual authority and to create authority where no actual authority exists.See First Energy (UK) Limited v Hungarian International Bank [1993] BCLC 1409 The law relating to companies and to ostensible authority are in reality only a sub-set of the rules relating to apparent authority and the law of agency generally, but because of the prevalence of the issue in relation to corporate law (companies, being artificial persons, are only ever able to act at all through their human agents), it has developed its own specific body of case law. However, some jurisdictions use the terms interchangeably.