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The Duchess of Sussex’s cover statement in The Mail On Sunday about her victory in her copyright claim is on hold while the newspaper’s editor requests permission to appeal.
Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline, was previously ordered to print a statement on its front page and a notice on page three of the newspaper.
The notice must state that the organization “infringed his copyright” by publishing parts of a “personal and private” letter to his estranged father, Thomas Markle.
The 39-year-old Duchess sued ANL over a series of articles reproducing parts of a “sincere” letter sent to 76-year-old Markle in August 2018.
He claimed that the five articles published in February 2019 involved misuse of his private information, violated his copyright, and violated the Data Protection Act.
The 39-year-old Duchess sued ANL over a series of articles
/ PennsylvaniaLast month, Meghan was awarded summary judgment in relation to her privacy claim, meaning she won that part of the case without going to trial, as well as most of her copyright claim.
ANL was initially denied permission to appeal against that decision, but can still apply directly to the Court of Appeal.
In another ruling on Monday, Lord Justice Warby said the ANL had also requested permission to appeal its order requiring The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline to publish the statements.
The judge denied ANL’s permission to appeal, but granted a “stay” of the order requiring publication of the statements “only until the Court of Appeal has decided the matter.”
The statement must appear on paper and online.
/ PA fileLord Justice Warby said the suspension would expire on April 6, to give ANL time to submit a request directly to the Court of Appeals.
Earlier this month, the judge ordered that The Mail On Sunday should print a “one time only statement on the front page,” which refers readers to an additional statement on page three of the newspaper.
The statement will read: “The court has ruled in favor of the Duchess of Sussex on her copyright infringement claim.
“The court found that Associated Newspapers infringed his copyright by publishing excerpts from his handwritten letter to his father in The Mail On Sunday and MailOnline.
“There will be a trial of the resources to which the Duchess is entitled, in which the court will decide if the Duchess is the exclusive owner of the copyright in all parts of the letter, or if someone else owns an action” .
Lord Justice Warby also ordered ANL to post the statement on MailOnline “for a period of one week” with a hyperlink in his full judgment.
The judge added: “In my opinion, these are measured incursions into the freedom of the accused to decide what to publish and what not to publish, which are justified in the pursuit of the legitimate purpose that I have identified, and are proportional to that purpose.
ANL is appealing the decision
/ PA wire“They will involve little or no additional expense, and certainly nothing that comes close to the scale of the expense that has been lavished on this litigation.”
In last month’s summary ruling, the judge said the publication of Meghan’s letter to her father was “manifestly excessive and therefore illegal.”
He said: “It was, ultimately, a personal and private letter.
“Most of what was published was about the plaintiff’s own behavior, her feelings of distress over her father’s behavior, as she viewed it, and the resulting rift between them.
“These are inherently private and personal matters.”
He said that “the only defensible justification for such interference was to correct some inaccuracies about the letter,” contained in a People magazine article published just days before the five ANL articles, which included an interview with five of Meghan’s friends.
But the judge added: “The inescapable conclusion is that, except to the very limited extent that I have identified, the disclosures made were not a necessary or proportionate means to fulfill that purpose.
“For the most part, they didn’t serve that purpose at all.
“Taken as a whole, the disclosures were manifestly excessive and therefore illegal.”
He also said that ANL’s arguments about ownership of the letter’s copyright “seem to me to occupy the land of shadows between improbability and unreality.”
