While he made a fortune in his reprint business, he and others also bore the expense of legal actions in this regard. These included Osborne v Donaldson (1765), against publisher Thomas Osborne, and Millar v Donaldson (1765); in 1769, Donaldson sued Reid over printing-house practices. In 1773, London bookseller James Hinton and Edinburgh writer Alexander M'Conochie sued Donaldson and John Wood in Edinburgh, and John Meurose in Kilmarnock over copyright infringement of several titles. Donaldson and his brother John were appellants in Donaldson v Beckett (1774), against the printers and booksellers Thomas Becket (or Beckett) (previously apprenticed to British publisher Andrew Millar), Peter Abraham de Hondt, John Rivington, William Johnson, William Strahan, Thomas Longman, William Richardson, John Richardson, Thomas Lowndes, Thomas Caslon, George Kearsley, Henry Baldwin, William Owen, Thomas Davies, and Thomas Cadell. The case resulted in a ruling by the British House of Lords on the issue of perpetual common law copyright and copyright as a statute that could have a limited duration.
