Danish magazine runs topless Kate photos

A Danish magazine on Thursday became the latest to run pictures of Prince William's wife Catherine topless, despite moves by furious British royals to stop the spread of the photos.

Grainy pictures of the former Kate Middleton taking off and putting on her bikini bottoms featured in the special supplement of Se og Hoer hit the newsstands on Thursday.

In 14 of the 36 photos published, the wife of Britain's second in line to the throne is shown sunbathing topless, like she has been previously in publications in France, Ireland, Italy and Sweden.

The pictures, which have infuriated the British royal family and revived debate on press intrusion, were first published by the French magazine Closer last week.

Ireland's Daily Star and Italy's Chi magazine swiftly followed suit and the images have been widely circulated on the Internet.

"This is nothing unusual, these are quite nice pictures if you compare them with other celebrity pictures that we publish all the time," Carina Loefkvist, chief editor of Se och Hoer, told AFP.

The publication in Sweden did not make headlines, with only two tabloids mentioning it and the rest of the media ignoring it.

Loefkvist had no figures for the number of copies Se och Hoer sold on Wednesday.

"It's been a bit of a topic of conversation ... but it's nothing special," she said.

The magazine had a regular weekly circulation of 105,600 in 2011.

Neither the Swedish nor the Danish magazine were going to make the pictures available online.

Loefkvist said her magazine bought the pictures "from photographers and photo agencies, the way we always do" and "before everything erupted".

The royal family's lawyers have obtained a civil injunction and sought criminal charges in Paris in a bid to curb the spread of the pictures, which emerged while Prince William, the second in line to the British throne, and his wife were on an Asia-Pacific tour.

French authorities on Tuesday banned Closer magazine from any further distribution of the pictures and began a criminal probe into how they were obtained.

The court also ordered the magazine to hand over the files with the images to the royal couple, which the publication did on Wednesday.

Closer has said it does not own the images and simply bought them for exclusive first use, so it likely does not possess all the original files. It has refused to say from whom it bought them and who the photographer is.

The French court also banned Closer from reusing the pictures in print or on its website and re-selling.

Kim Henningsen, the chief editor of the Danish magazine, said he was "incredibly proud" to have obtained the sole Danish rights to the snaps.

"Our readers love to follow the lives of the royals, and they want scoops," he said on the magazine's website, noting these were photographs "which the whole world is talking about, but very few have actually seen".

When asked about Thursday's publication, a spokeswoman for St James's Palace, the office of Prince William and Catherine, issued a similar comment to one made after the publication in Italy.

"As we've said, we will not be commenting on potential legal action concerning the alleged intended publication of the photos save to say that all proportionate responses will be kept under review," the spokeswoman said.

Loefkvist said she was "not really" concerned about any potential legal action over the Swedish magazine's decision to print the photos.

"We'll have to see what they think of it ... This was a regular news judgement," she said.

In Sweden, the press is governed by a self-regulated code of ethics and not legislation.

Agence France-Presse in Stockholm