'OK!' triumphs in battle of the Zeta Jones wedding snaps

The celebrity magazine OK! has won a long-running court battle with its glossy rival Hello! after a row over pictures of the wedding of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas.

The House of Lords ruled yesterday that Hello! had breached OK!'s confidentiality when it published unauthorised photographs of the ceremony at New York's Plaza Hotel in November 2000.

The Hollywood couple and OK! first sued Hello! when it published pictures taken secretly at the wedding by a photographer posing as a guest or waiter.

When the case came to court in 2003, Mr Justice Lindsay ruled that Hello! had acted "unconscionably" by publishing the unauthorised photographs. The judge said the snatched photographs, taken by Rupert Thorpe, son of the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, had been obtained by "misrepresentation or subterfuge" and said the "intrusion" was a breach of the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct. In that ruling, the Douglases and OK! were awarded £1m damages, but this was quashed after Hello! successfully went to the Court of Appeal in May 2005. Yesterday's decision means the damages award will now be reinstated.

Three out of five Law Lords found in OK!'s favour over confidentiality but lawyers for Hello! said the victory was pyrrhic because the court also found that Hello! had not knowingly injured OK!'s business. That meant, said lawyers, the estimated £8m costs of the case were expected to be shared by the two magazines.

The £14,600 damages awarded to Douglas and his wife by the High Court for the distress and inconvenience that the Hello! coverage caused them was not challenged at the Court of Appeal.

Hello! argued during the five-day hearing at the House of Lords that any confidentiality ceased after OK! published its own coverage of the wedding while OK! claimed that Hello!'s coverage was unlawful interference with its business or a breach of its right to confidentiality in the images.

Lord Hoffmann said OK! had paid £1m for the benefit of confidence imposed on everyone at the wedding regarding any photographs taken, and "I cannot see why they were not entitled to enforce it." He said other law lords who heard the case were troubled by the fact that the images were not intended to be kept secret but to be published by OK! But Lord Hoffmann said: "I see no reason why there should not be an obligation of confidence for the purpose of enabling someone to be the only source of publication if that is worth paying for." He said it would not create "an image right" - the information was being protected not because it concerned the Douglases or their private life but simply because it was information of commercial value.

Lord Nicholls and Lord Walker rejected the confidentiality claim but Baroness Hale and Lord Brown allowed the appeal. Lord Brown said: "Having paid £1m for an exclusive right, it seems to me that OK! ought to be in a position to protect that right and to look to the law for redress were a third party intentionally to destroy it."