Meghan Markle threatening to sue Mail on Sunday

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.