Kate wins legal battle

Kate and William have won a landmark legal case to block further publication of “highly intimate” photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge.
The Royal couple's lawyers have successfully secured an injunction from a French court preventing the images being spread across the globe by the owners of Closer - the first to publish the naked pictures.
It is a sensational victory for the Duke and Duchess with the judge yesterday hitting the French magazine with a series of strict punishments for the breach of privacy.
The yesterday morning ruling means: Closer France must not print any more copies of its controversial issue and take the topless pictures off its website; the photos cannot be published in any other magazines or papers in France; the photographs cannot be sold by them to anyone else in the world and Within 24 hours the offending pictures must be handed over to the Palace.
The court said Closer would get a 10,000 euro daily fine each time they sell them on or publish them.
At the start of the unprecedented court case in Paris, barrister Aurelien Hammelle evoked memories of Princess Diana's ordeal at the hands of paparazzi as he said a photographer had violated Kate's privacy, adding she is a “young woman, not an object”.
Judges agreed the magazine must “give back” the equipment on which the digital photos were stored and banned the images from sale in France or abroad within 24 hours.
Legal fees of 2,000 euros were also awarded to the Royal couple.
The Duke and Duchess have also filed a criminal complaint under France's privacy laws which could see Closer fined up 36,000 pounds and its editor serve up to a year in prison. And they have filed against “persons unknown”, referring to the photographer, who has not yet been identified.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are suing the French Closer magazine for printing semi-naked pictures of Kate last week.
It is the first time that a member of the Royal Family has sued a publication through the courts in France.
Their lawyer Hammelle has accused the magazine of intruding on a “highly intimate moment” by taking the topless pictures of Kate while she was on a private holiday at a chateau in Provence.
The lawyer compared the “grotesque invasion” to the relentless pursuit of Princess Diana by photographers.
The photographer responsible should be prosecuted, the Royals say.
Hammelle said the pictures of the Duchess were taken “just six days after the 15th anniversary of the useless, cynical and morbid hunt which led to the death of William's mother”.
Lawyers representing Italian publishing group Mondadori, which owns France's Closer and is controlled by former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, told the court that the photos are not theirs to sell.
William and Kate have indicated that they are prepared to present evidence themselves, once they return from their royal tour in the Far East.
Their lawyer told the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris that the couple could not have known they were being photographed and it would only have been possible to see them with a long lens.
He said Silvio Berlusconi's company Mondadori, which owns the French edition of Closer, should be fined £8,000 per day if it fails to hand over the original digital images.
A judge is expected to decide whether to grant William and Kate an injunction over any further publication or sale of the pictures at midday today.
However, any fine is likely to be dwarfed by the amount the magazine has made over the past five days.
Most French newsagents have sold out and the magazine's iPad application keeps crashing because so many are trying to view the pictures.