British royal Prince Harry won a legal dispute with Splash News, a photo agency which used a helicopter to take pictures inside his home. As well as arguing that they invaded his privacy, the Duke of Sussex also based his case on the photographers having mishandled his personal data under Europe's new GDPR law. Business Insider reports that this is an unexpected application of data law, which is more commonly thought of as governing large online databases and spammy mailing lists. It opens a new avenue in the royal family's never-ending struggle to keep parts of their lives out of the public eye. Legal experts have previously said data protection legislation could give public figures a different way to beat the media in court. Timothy Pinto, a senior counsel for the law firm Taylor Wessing, wrote an article about GDPR in media law, which said it offered a potentially attractive alternative to claims of defamation of invasion of privacy. It said: ‘To succeed in a defamation claim, the claimant must establish at least that: (i) the statement complained of is defamatory of him or her; and (ii) the serious harm to reputation threshold has been met. For a privacy claim, the claimant must establish that information is private. ‘In contrast, a claimant relying on data protection law need not prove either of these things.’