[ad_1]
Meghan, the Duchess of Susbad, threatened the Mail on Sunday to take legal action under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act for publishing a private letter sent to her father, in which she claimed that he had broken her heart "in a million pieces".
Representatives of the Duchess, formerly known as Meghan Markle, have been in contact with the paper after her decision earlier this month to release the handwritten message sent to Thomas Markle in which, according to some sources, she would have complained with a "heavy heart". the pain that his father was causing by giving interviews to the media.
Meghan complained to his father about "fabricating this fictional story" about the fact that his life had been interrupted with Prince Harry, with the help of his regular newspaper interviews and to television. Thomas Markle missed the royal wedding last year after revealing that he had collaborated with a paparazzi agency to present pictures of himself at his home in Mexico.
He authorized the Mail on Sunday to publish excerpts from the letter earlier this month, claiming that he was doing so in response to critical interviews given by the Duchess's friends in the US magazine People. The newspaper commissioned a "writing expert" to badyze the letter.
The Royals have previously invoked copyright law to try to keep the material out of the public domain. In 2005, Prince Charles had targeted the Mail on Sunday after publishing excerpts from a newspaper he had written for his friends during the transfer from Hong Kong to China. The Daily Telegraph has already suggested that Kensington Palace is considering an approach similar to the recent letter from the Duchess's father.
It is unclear how Mail on Sunday will react to the possible pursuit and the letter remains available on Mail Online.
"A letter is a copyrighted work because it is a literary work," said Alex Newman, National Manager of Intellectual Property Law at Notary Irwin Mitchell. . "As soon as you create a work protected by copyright, you will own it until it expires automatically. This gives you the right to prevent anyone from copying or diffusing to the public the entirety or a substantial part of your work protected by copyright. "
The Mail on Sunday has printed nine separate excerpts from the five-page handwritten letter, which have been promoted on the front page as a worldwide exclusive.
Newman stated that there were exceptions to the copyright law for "fair use" when reporting events and news reviews, which means that it was possible to publish extracts without the creator's approval in certain circumstances.
He added that the legal justification for publication by the newspaper could be based on the publication of a "substantial part" of the letter, taking into account both the proportion of the printed letter and the importance of the sections used. .
Buckingham Palace, which deals with the affairs of the greatest royals, wrote separately to the Mail on Sunday to complain about the decision to publish photographs in January featuring the queen on a pheasant shoot in her field. of Sandringham, baderting that the monarch had a reasonable reason. waiting for privacy when on his private land.
The newspaper has maintained its decision to print images of the Queen carrying dead birds during a photo shoot with Princess Anne and former Formula One driver Jackie Stewart, insisting on the fact that the photographs had been taken from a public road.
Kensington Palace and the Mail on Sunday declined to comment.
Source link
