Duchess ‘knew her letter would be made public’
THE Duchess of Sussex sought help from senior palace aides when drafting a letter to her father knowing it would be disclosed to the public, court documents allege.
The Duchess revealed that she spent “several weeks” composing the letter on her iphone’s Notes app before carefully copying it out by hand. But The Mail on Sunday, which is being sued by the Duchess, argued that she did not write it alone. In papers lodged at the
High Court, the newspaper alleged Kensington Palace’s press team, including Jason Knauf, its communications secretary at the time, helped compose it.
It also argued the letter simply recited “pre-existing facts and admonishment” including views of her father and his conduct, and was therefore not her “own intellectual creation”. The Duchess is suing Associated
Newspapers for breach of privacy and copyright after it published extracts of the letter. A 10-day trial is due next autumn. The letter at the heart of the case went to Mr Markle in August 2018, three months after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding. In it, the
Duchess accused her estranged father of breaking her heart “into a million pieces”.
Its existence only came to light six months later in a US magazine, briefed by friends of the Duchess. In an amended claim lodged at the High Court, the Duchess said that she drafted the letter “using her own intellectual creativity” on her iphone before writing it out, making a number of “minor modifications”. The claim described both the electronic draft and the letter as “original literary work[s]”, which should be protected by copyright.
But a document lodged by The Mail on Sunday’s lawyers last week claimed otherwise. “It is for the claimant to prove she was the only person who contributed to the writing of the electronic draft,” it stated, adding that “Jason Knauf and/or others in the Kensington Palace communications team contributed to the writing of the electronic draft.
“Precisely which parts were the result of such contribution is uniquely known to the claimant, Jason Knauf and others in the team.”
Mr Knauf was communications secretary to the Cambridges and the Sussexes until March 2019, when the two households split. He is now chief executive of the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The newspaper alleged that as the letter was not wholly original the Duchess did not have copyright.
“The whole of the letter comprises a recitation of facts both past and present, including the claimant’s views as to her father and his conduct and an admonishment to him,” the document added. “The defendant’s case is all of those pre-existing facts and admonishment as such are not themselves part of any literary intellectual creation of the claimant and therefore not original in the copyright sense.”
In September, The Mail on Sunday successfully applied to amend its defence in light of the publication of Finding Freedom, a biography of the Sussexes that paints them in a favourable light. It claimed the Duchess breached her own privacy when she “permitted” details of her life to be shared with the book’s authors, something she strenuously denied. Her legal team failed to meet an Oct 21 deadline to set out her “reply”. It was extended to Nov 13 but was again extended to tomorrow by Mr Justice Warby.