The U.K. Supreme Court upheld an injunction banning News Corp.’s Sun on Sunday newspaper from revealing details about a celebrity’s sex life, delivering a blow to publishers seeking a sales boost from reporting on the affair.

The married star at the center of the story, whose identity can’t be revealed because of the court order, had a number of sexual encounters, including a threesome with a couple who tried to sell the story to the press. His identity was published in the U.S. and Canada and other nations.

“There is no public interest, however much it might be of interest to the public, in publishing kiss-and-tell stories,” Supreme Court judge Jonathan Mance said Thursday. The court upheld the injunction, even though details are widely available online, until a trial can be held, saying the story breached the privacy of the star and his family.

A spokeswoman for News Corp.’s U.K. business declined to immediately comment.

The latest spat between celebrities and Britain’s tabloid press comes at a difficult time for the newspaper industry. Print sales have been falling for years and publishers are struggling to profit from online journalism. Meanwhile, illegal phone-hacking by News Corp.’s News of the World and other papers led to a backlash against media intrusion, lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and a public inquiry.

‘Swing Back’

“The judgment today is clearly a major swing back in favor of granting greater privacy protection,” said Gideon Benaim, a lawyer who specializes in reputation protection and who isn’t involved in the case. “Spurious claims that something is in the public interest, when it clearly isn’t anything of the sort, have suffered a major blow.”

The case of PJS, as judges called the anonymous star, shows the U.K.’s famously abrasive tabloids still relish a fight, especially when it comes to the money they can make from the sex lives of the rich and famous.

“Circulations and site traffic are still driven by scoops,” said Alex De Groote, a media analyst at Peel Hunt who covers several British publishing groups including Trinity Mirror Plc and Daily Mail and General Trust Plc. “In the Twitter age, newspapers cannot afford to be constrained by injunctions if they want to remain relevant commercially.”

Tabloid Start

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