Mind your Ps and Qs — and watch your Rs
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone: English cases often begin with the formula “R v …”, where “R” is an abbreviation for Rex or Regina (Latin for king/queen) — but he’s found a case brought by P and Q as well as R. It’s P, Q and R v Quigley [2008] EWHC 1051 (QB), a decision of Mr Justice Eady from 16 May 2008. You can read it here in full on BAILII. In brief, the anonymised applicants (P, Q and R) applied for summary judgment on their claim for a permanent injunction to stop Quigley publishing “purported information” concerning the sexual activities of P and Q (Q being P’s husband and also a former director and chief executive of a company, R).
Right: taking pains to preserve their anonymity, P and Q would adopt disguises whenever they met in public
There was obviously a bit of bad feeling between the parties since Quigley used to work for R but, after his resignation, criminal proceedings had been commenced against him following allegations that he had been siphoning off R’s business opportunities — proceedings which were abandoned on account of Quigley’s mental health. Quigley then brought an action for malicious prosecution against R, which was settled. Subsequently Quigley threatened to publish a novella on the internet, starring P and Q, thinly disguised, who were to be depicted as participants in various unsavoury and fictitious sexual activities. Having secured interim injunctive relief, P and Q sought to make the ban permanent on the basis that the publication of Quigley’s novella would infringe their rights to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 8.
Eady J granted the permanent injunction. In his view
* the balancing act between P and Q’s rights of privacy and Quigley’s right to freedom of expression under Article…