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23rd Feb 2019

Meghan Markle threatening to sue Mail on Sunday

The Duchess of Sussex has threatened the Mail on Sunday with legal action after it published sections of a private letter she sent to her father

Oli Dugmore

The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has threatened the Mail on Sunday with legal action after it published sections of a private letter she sent to her father

Meghan Markle has threatened to sue the Mail on Sunday under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

The newspaper published segments of a private letter Markle sent to her father Thomas.

Thomas Markle released the letter to the newspaper in a bid to respond to a critical interview given by the duchess’ friends to People, an American magazine.

The Mail on Sunday commissioned a “handwriting expert” to analyse the letter, the Guardian reports, and printed nine different extracts.

Copyright lawyer Alex Newman told the Guardian: “A letter is a copyright work as it is a literary work.

“As soon as you create a copyright work, you will own the copyright until it expires automatically. This gives you the right to prevent anyone else copying, or issuing to the public, the whole or a substantial part of your copyrighted work.”

It’s understood Markle asked her father to stop feeding a media narrative about their relationship by providing interviews and stories to publishers.

Kensington Palace has used copyright legislation to curtail reporting in the past.