The legal battle between the Duchess of Sussex and the publishers of the Mail on Sunday has been ongoing since October 2019 (opens in new tab). Today, however, a judge issued a ruling over parts of the case, ruling that Duchess Meghan had won summary judgment on the misuse of personal information and copyright infringement. However, Judge Warby also ruled that the issue of who owns the copyright would need to be tested at trial, meaning that royal staff could be asked to provide evidence as to who contributed to the creation of the work.

"The claimant had a reasonable expectation that the contents of the letter would remain private. The email article interfered with that reasonable expectation," the ruling stated. However, with respect to the copyright aspect of the case, the ruling continued, the case "does not lend itself to summary judgment." It concludes:

"Summary judgment is granted to the claimant on the claim for unauthorized use of personal information and on the issues I have identified in the copyright infringement claim. A hearing is required to determine the remaining issues in the copyright infringement claim and to determine what relief should be granted." [After the ruling, Meghan issued a passionate statement, thanking the court for "holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail on Sunday accountable for their illegal and inhuman conduct." She continued: "These tactics (and those of their sister publications, Mail Online and The Daily Mail) are not new, and in fact have been going on for far too long without consequence. For these publishers, this is a game. To me and many others, it is real life, real relationships, and very real grief. The damage they have done and continue to do is profound. She also said she hopes the trial will set "a precedent that you cannot take someone's privacy and exploit it in a privacy trial as the defendants have so blatantly done over the past two years."

Dame Meghan concluded: "Because we all deserve justice and truth.

The Duchess announced in October 2019 that she would be taking legal action against the publishers of the Mail on Sunday following a royal tour of South Africa. The lawsuit took twists and turns, and much personal information about Meghan's relationship with her father Thomas Markle (opens in new tab) was made public, including text messages sent for their May 2018 wedding.The Mail on Sunday was revealed in February 2019 in a People magazine published part of a handwritten letter to his father after its existence was revealed by an anonymous friend in an interview.

In his privacy ruling, Judge Warby found:

"The only justification for such interference is to correct inaccurate information about the letter contained in the People magazine article. An objective review of the articles in light of the surrounding circumstances leads inexorably to the conclusion that, except to a very limited extent, disclosure was not a necessary and proper means of fulfilling that purpose. In most cases, that purpose was not served at all. Taken as a whole, the disclosures were clearly excessive and therefore illegal. There is no prospect that a different decision will be reached as a result of the trial. The interference with freedom of expression that these conclusions indicate is a necessary and proportionate means to pursue the legitimate goal of protecting the privacy of the claimant.

With respect to copyright, the court noted that a trial over who is entitled to copyright "may affect the extent to which a claimant can establish copyright infringement and the relief from which the claimant can recover." "However," he added, "there is no doubt that the defendant's conduct involved copyright infringement of an electronic draft of which the claimant was the owner, or at worst a co-owner.

A spokesperson for Associated Newspapers Ltd said: "We are very surprised by today's summary judgment and disappointed that we were denied the opportunity to hear and examine all the evidence in open court in a full trial. We are carefully reviewing the decision and will decide shortly whether to appeal."