Meghan Markle wins Copyright claim against Mail

The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has won her copyright infringement claim against the British publication, The Mail.

The publisher of Mail, Associated Newspaper Limited, was served a lawsuit by Meghan’s team of lawyers for releasing private texts and handwritten letters between her and her estranged father, Thomas Markle to the public.

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The publication in a series of articles had released parts of her handwritten letter sent to her Dad, in August 2018.

Meghan claimed in her lawsuit that the publication misused her private information, infringed her copyright and breached the Data Protection Act.

The judge, Lord Justice Warby on May 5 granted summary judgment to the Duchess after the Queen of England, who is her mother in law, said the letter is not owned by Royalty.

The wife of Prince Harry had earlier won parts of the case back in February when the court awarded judgement in her favour over the misuse of private information and copyright infringement.

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The actress’s victory stopped her from proceeding to the court, however, the court still had to settle who owned the copyright.

ANL had claimed that parts of the letter belongs to the riyal family, The Crown but the queen refuted this claim. According to them, the Duchess’s former Communications Secretary, Jason Knauf, was a co- author of the letter which implied that it’s copyright belonged to the crown.

On Wednesday, May 5, at a remote hearing, Lord Warby granted summary judgement in relation to the remaining parts of the letter after lawyers acting on the Queen’s behalf said the letter didnot belong to the Crown.

Meghan’s solicitor said about the claim,”The High Court heard that Mr Knauf empathically denied being a co author and that lawyers representing the Keeper if the Privy Purse, acting on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, didnot consider the Crown to be the copyright owner”.

Ian Mill QC, for the Duchess said that the Keeper of the Privy Purse’s lawyers had written to Meghan’s solicitors disclaiming any claim to copyright on behalf of the Crown”.

In written submissions, Mr Mill also said that Mr Knauf’s lawyers confirmed he didnot write the letter to Mr Markle and it has never been his belief that he was an author”.

The Duchess alone was the one who had handwriting the letter to her father with no assistance from the royal family.

The only reason why ANL thought that the Crown owned the letter was because the Duchess seeked advise from Mr Knauf’s by sharing a draft of the letter to him as he was responsible for keeping the senior royals abreast with any public issue facing the family.

Her lawyer told the court that Mr Knauf’s had only suggested that the Duchess include her father’s deteriorating health, which Meghan did, but he had no input on her choice of words.

He asked Lord Justice Warby to grant summary judgement in relation to the remaining parts of Meghan’s copyright claim, arguing that ANL’s case on the ownership of the copyright in the letter has been proven to be completely baseless.