After winning her lawsuit against the publisher of The Mail on Sunday earlier this year over the publishing of a private letter she sent to her father, Meghan Markle has scored yet another victory against the U.K. tabloid in their two-and-a-half-year-long legal battle.
At a remote hearing on Wednesday held at the High Court in London, a judge ruled that Meghan is the sole copyright owner of the letter at the center of the case, which was sent to her father, Thomas Markle, in August 2018, three months after her wedding to Prince Harry. During previous hearings, the legal team for Associated Newspapers, the publisher that owns The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, claimed that the royal could not be the sole copyright holder because former Kensington Palace communications chief Jason Knauf had seen an early draft of the letter and had helped Meghan compose it. However, on Wednesday, it was revealed that Knauf “emphatically” denied that assertion.
Lawyers representing “the Keeper of the Privy Purse, acting on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen” wrote in official court documents, obtained by People, that “Mr. Knauf did not draft, and has never claimed to have drafted, any parts of the electronic draft or the letter,” revealing that the duchess had started writing the letter in the Notes app on her iPhone “around the first week of August 2018.” They conceded that she did show the draft to her husband and Knauf, but only “for support, as this was a deeply painful process that they had lived through with her and because Mr Knauf was responsible for keeping the senior members of the royal household apprised of any public-facing issues.” Knauf apparently provided some “general ideas” for the missive, such as mentioning her father’s ill health, but otherwise it “was the Duchess’s letter alone.”
In February of this year, Meghan won her lawsuit against Associated Newspapers, with the judge ruling that the publisher did in fact breach her privacy and copyright when its newspaper published the letter, adding an additional ruling in March that ordered its papers to print a notice on page three stating what they had done. (Associated Newspapers has said they intend to appeal.) Also in February, Prince Harry received an apology and won “substantial damages” from Associated Newspapers over “baseless, false, and defamatory” allegations that he snubbed the Royal Marines after stepping down as a senior royal.
A source close to the duchess told Vanity Fair last fall that when it comes to seeking justice, “there’s no wavering. [Meghan] is resolute that she intends to see this to the end. It’s costing a lot of money, but no one has been in the dark about the scale of this and what it’s going to cost. The duchess’s eyes were wide open when she went into this, and she feels as strongly now as she did then that she has to draw a line in the sand. The publication of the letter and how Thomas was treated by The Mail on Sunday has caused real damage to their relationship.”
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