On January 15, 2021, Justice Jay of the England and Wales High Court Queen’s Bench Division announced a decision in the matter of Soriano v. Forensic News and Others, which was the first U.K. judgment addressing “the territorial scope” of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in that the defendants are a U.S.-based investigative journalism website, its owner, and several journalists responsible for publishing ten social media posts related to “the activities of Psy Group, a private Israeli intelligence company in Ukraine allegedly connected to Mr. Soriano.”
The Court determined that Mr. Soriano had “no arguable case” to bring his claims of malicious falsehood, harassment, misuse of private information and libel in the U.K. under Article 79(2), Article 3(1), Article 3(2)(a), and Article 3(2)(b) of the GDPR.