OK! magazine won it’s appeal today against glossy rival Hello! in the dispute over the Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas wedding photographs.

The Hollywood couple agreed an exclusive picture deal with OK! magazine to cover their New York wedding in 2000. They did the £1 million deal to ward off rival paparazzi and secure their peace and privacy. Or so they thought.

In fact, Hello! managed to obtain pictures of the wedding and they published unofficial spoiler photographs in the same week as their rival’s expensive “exclusive” shots. OK! magazine and the Douglases were furious and went to court.

Today’s final ruling ends seven years of legal wrangling which has seen the pair ridiculed and vilified in equal measure. The Douglases have only ever been awarded £14,600 for their trouble.

The winner today was OK! magazine who secured the £1 million damages settlement to be paid by Hello!, however that payment is dwarfed by the estimated £8 million legal costs. The Lords ruled that Hello! did not damage OK!’s business so the sides will have to share the bill.

The £1 million damages payment was first awarded by the High Court in April 2003 when the Douglases and OK! sued Hello! for breach of confidence and commercial damages. A four-year legal battle followed that decision.

In 2005 the Court of Appeal quashed the payout to OK! saying the exclusive deal did not give the magazine any rights it could enforce in law, but today’s appeal in the highest court in the country decided that right should be legally binding.

Ian De Freitas, intellectual property partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner said: "This ruling further entrenches the right of celebrities to cash in on their fame and prevent unauthorised stories concerning their private lives. The courts are saying that fame is a commodity that can be traded just like any other."

The Law Lords were split on the decision, with three backing the OK! payment, while two ruled against it. The two dissenters were unwilling to rule in favour of a breach of confidentiality, when the pictures were due to be published in any case.

“The Douglases were content to have wedding photos published, for a handsome fee, so long as they had strict control over the selection of the pictures,” said one of the panel, Lord Brown. He dismissed the appeal, saying the law of confidentiality should not be used to protect exclusivity in a spectacle.

The appeal was upheld with three Lords deciding the contract should have been binding. Lord Brown said: “Having paid £1 million 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.”

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