A British court ruled Monday in favour of pop superstar Madonna, who is seeking five million pounds (7.4m dollars, 5.7m euros) over the publication of private photos of her wedding to her ex-husband.
London's High Court is expected to determine the amount to be paid in damages next year over the photos of her 2000 wedding with British film director Guy Ritchie, whom she divorced last month.
Judge David Eady found in favour of the artist, whose legal team had argued that the ceremony was "wholly private," and that an interior designer doing work at her Beverly Hills home had copied them.
Madonna, 50, and Ritchie were granted their divorce last month, having announced it in October.
The couple were married on December 22, 2000 at a lavish ceremony at a Scottish castle, attended by stars including Gwyneth Paltrow and Sting.
The only photographs taken of the wedding were by photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who presented them to Madonna as a personal gift.
Madonna assembled them into an album and kept them in her home.
One of her interior designers, Robert Joseph Wilber, copied at least 26 photographs from that album, by taking photographs of them. They were then handed over to the Mail on Sunday weekly newspaper by another woman, Bonnie Robinson, on the day Madonna and Ritchie announced their split.
Robinson, who lives in Los Angeles, was paid 5,000 pounds for the pictures, 11 of which were published by the Mail on Sunday on October 19, and were reduced in size so that readers would not know that they were photographs of photographs.
Madonna's lawyer, Matthew Nicklin, said the singer was given no warning, and added that she was seeking "in excess of five million pounds, being the estimated value of the photographs".
Her spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg, said the singer would donate any damages awarded to the charitable foundation she set up to help Aids orphans in Malawi, where her three-year-old adopted son David Banda was born.
Madonna is thought to be the world's highest-earning female singer: Forbes.com put her at the top of its latest "cash queens of music" list with earnings of 72 million dollars between June 2006 and June 2007.
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