For Many years now I have been intrested in caselaw surrounding drone flight, not tit for tat opinions and/or interpertion by indivduals of the law, I found this very intresting article posted by Oliver Derham, a trainee solicitor with Osborne Clarke, co-authored this Insight. Whilst his article Published on 15th April 2025 is current as of the date of its publication and does not necessarily reflect the present state of the law or relevant regulation.
Two approaches have been taken by the High Court to granting injunctions against âdrone trespassâ over private property
As caselaw surrounding drone flight develops, the decisions in [Anglo International Upholland Ltd v Wainwright & Persons Unknown] [2023] and [MBR Acres Ltd v Curtin] [2025] offer a window into the English courtâs approach to granting injunctions to stop drones flying over private property.
In each case, the court emphasised different factors when considering granting an injunction preventing alleged drone trespass. Both judgments offered clues as to how a court might decide, but fell short of providing certainty for landowners seeking this remedy.
Interesting. It looks as if âtrespass by droneâ cases are predicated to some extent on the height of the drone and the courtâs understanding of the purpose of the flight. In one of these cases, the thing hinged on the drone, while being flown high enough not to trespass by interfering with the landowners right or ability to âenjoyâ his land, was nonetheless considered to be flying low enough to survey points of entry to the land for protest purposes.
This is a bit of an open-ended and imprecise definition. If a drone flying legally at 400â above the land but using the zoom feature on itâs camera lens can accurately survey points of ingress for potential future trespassers/protesters, would the footage be incriminating, or does someone make an assessment of the droneâs height AGL and infer itâs observation of entry points from that? If the latter, we would be relying on triangulation to assess the droneâs height, and if this could be proved incorrect by flight data, would that not be a challenge to the judgement?
Thinking aloud, Iâm not any sort of expert on such matters, but I am aware that the law in practice is determined by case law, so that council can invoke âx v yâ or âa v bâ to bring a legal argument before the judge.
To be fair, the different court decisions reflect slightly different situations, but it shows how different interpretations can be applied to fairly similar cases! On the face of it, the concept of overflying private property at a height sufficient to prevent the ownersâ enjoyment of it seems sensible enough, and if adhered to the drone flight is legal and the landowner not prevented in his enjoyement, so everybodyâs happy (it is alleged/says here)! But a height consistent with not preventing the landownerâs rightful enjoyment of his property is not established, and nobody knows what it is except that itâs someoneâs opinion at that time. If it were to be established at more than 400â AGL, that would effectively ban hobby drones from flying over any private land, anywhere, anytime, clearly not the intention! Overflying private land has to be done at a suitable height, but that height cannot exceed 400âAGL.
Nor do we know if the legal position is affected by the use of telephoto lenses!
I presume it is legal if properly authorised, but I have no clear idea of what body or official has the power to properly authorise it. Home secretary, I would guess! How does the equipment differentiate between a drone and other devices that rely on RC signals? If a jammed drone crashes and causes injury or death to a 3rd party, is the drone pilot or the jamming authority legally responsible in terms of claims against? Does this depend on the legality of the drone flight? Can single drones be targeted by jammers? What action can be taken against illegal/unauthorised/hostile agent jammers? How would you prove youâd been jammed?
A drone at a height may well be able to record what they want from adjoining land; so to try to prevent a drone or aircraft from tresspass, or perhaps overflying, seems a very blunt method of trying to prevent a flight unless every owner of surrounding properties all get injunctions to cover the whole area. The costs of which would be crazy. This generally does not seem to be a plausible method.
The Bernstein case effectively said that there was no action in tresspass if I have understood it correctly. Because of the height of the flight which would have been over 500 feet, in the Bernstein Case, there was no privacy issue. Maintaining the land owner had rights to use of the air space to the height he may reasonably wish to use it would perhaps take into account say high rise buildings, which I pressume the CAAâs powers cannot prevent being built?? At the time of that case drones were generally not being used so it may be the court was more concerned with buildings/aerials etc rather than aircraft?
I guess until a case runs the full course to the Supreme Court the arguments will go on and be challenged. I guess lawyers being lawyers will continue to use novel arguments to try to win their clients case.
I just make my observations a a member of Jo Public with no legal qualification or training.
I remember learning about the Bernstein v Skyviews case when I was at uni doing a property related degree. If I recall correctly the case involved a company that flew fixed wing light aircraft over property taking photographs and then sold those images to the house owners. I think Iâm right is saying that light aircraft had to fly above 500 feet under the CAA rules? Thus my reference to above 500 feet but it is likely they were much higher. In the late1970âs cameras were no where near modern cameras in respect of clarity thus unlikely to be a significant privacy isssue. Thus Bernsteinâs action for tresspass as well. I hope this clarifies my reference to 500 feet. Drones were not common place in the 1970âs. As I say I donât claim any expertise just making observations as Joe public.
I would doubt itâs authorised and doubt it is something that could be. Iâm no expert but itâs probably Ofcom who would regulate this, as jamming drones presumably involves spamming the same frequencies that drones use (which may not be exclusive to drones) such that it causes interference. Again, Iâm no expert but if you knew how, I would guess itâs fairly easy to detect jamming is going on. It sounds shady if thatâs in place at the site.
On the question of jamming drones I read somewhere about Israel alledgedly interferring with drone GPS/signals in the Gaza region. This was apparently causing drones being flown is eastern Cyprus showing up as the drones being in Beirut and as a result drones being confused as to where they were and ditching in, or being lost, in the sea.
Having recently visited south east Cyprus I was intending to take my drone but decided it was not worth the risk having read about the above. Can anyone on here throw more light on this subject?
I worked for Views, an aerial photography firm setup by an ex-Skyviews employee. We were following the same model of taking unsolicited photos of property and then sending salespeople out to show a proof print of their property and samples of pictures on board or canvas and framed.
I had no direct contact with Skyviews but I understand that they used Hasselblads and the pictures were taken by the pilots themselves, flying Cessna 150/2 or 170/2 aircraft. We used Canon SLRs, for me initilally an AE-1 and then an A-1. I had a range of lenses from 28mm (for an overall view of an area om approach to the target to 200mm. Using 35mm film meant that I had to be careful with framing of the subject, Skyviews with the bigger 6x6 format were able to point and shoot more loosely,
I had the luxury of a pilot who did the flying side of things, my responsibility was totake the pictures while marking our route on a 1:50,000 Landranger OS map. With a 200mm f2.8 lens and 100 ASA film I was able to shoot at 1/500 to 1/1000 second and pick out individual houses such as bungalows or three-bed detached as well as the larger properties.
We were fulyy aware of the aviation regulations regarding height. I was too busy taking pictures - up to 70 x36 exposure cassettes of film per day - while marking the map to check the altimeter or any other flight instruments but often â500 feetâ seemed a generous estimate of our height.
My first encounter with Ben the Shepherd (he had flown sheep in Bristol Frighteners from Ireland) was at Squires Gate Airport, Blackpool. He limped out to the aircraft, banged the control surfaces violently up and down and pronounced himself happy to take off. Once we were airborne he was quite happy for me to take the controls until we reached the start of our area for the day when he took over. Halfway through the first film I had to tell him to fly much higher - I couldnât fit an entire house in the frame! We must have been at 150 feet or lower. Once I had persuaded him that 500 feet was satisfactory we got on well.
In the late1970âs cameras were no where near modern cameras in respect of clarity
On the contrary, they were/are equal to or better than many modern camera systems
The resolution of film images depends upon the area of film used to record the image (35 mm, medium format or large format) and the film speed. Estimates of a photographâs resolution taken with a 35 mm film camera vary. More information may be recorded if a fine-grain film is used, while the use of poor-quality optics or coarse-grained film may yield lower image resolution. A 36 mm Ă 24 mm frame of ISO 100-speed film was initially estimated to contain the equivalent of 20 million pixels,[6]: 99 or approximately 23,000 pixels per square mm.
Many professional-quality film cameras use medium-format or large-format films. Because of the relatively large size of the imaging area these media provide, they can record higher resolution images than most consumer digital cameras. Based upon the above pixel density, a medium-format film image can record an equivalent resolution of approximately 83 million pixels in the case of a 60 x 60 mm frame, to 125 million pixels in the case of a 60 x 90 mm frame. In the case of large format, 4 x 5 inch films can record approximately 298.7 million pixels, and 1,200 million pixels in the case of 8 x 10 inch film. However, as with a digital system, poor optical quality of lenses will decrease the resolving potential of a film emulsion.
Thank you so much for your interesting and enlightening post. First hand accounts will always be best evidence. I readily and happily stand corrected on camera quality. I was interested in photography at the time and I always wanted a hasselblad SLR which used a larger format film (120 film seems to be in my mind???) I did in later years have a Canon AE1-P but never got particularly good photos with its 50mm standard canon lens. But would have been using standard 35mm film. I did use Rollieflex TLRâs for work which were fairly good but again used larger film.
Thank you so much for posting this I found it enlightening and very interesting. As I said I am just a Joe Public and claim no particular expertise and when I look back at my own photos the accuity was not very good - perhaps my fault!! Indeed we were sold a photo of the type taken by Skyview and it is not very sharp. And we had a bit of a hard sell but got it for quite a low price arguing I would be the only customer they would find for a photo of our house!!
Also interesting about the height you were flying at. Thank you very much Macspite
.. I wonder what the situation is when adequate control of a drone is lost as a result of being jammed and then flies into a child and maims/blinds/injures it.
