The couple's lawyers want a civil court to force Closer to hand over the images
A criminal inquiry has started over the publication of topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge, the AFP news agency has reported.
It comes ahead of a court ruling on a bid by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to stop a French magazine selling and distributing the images.
The couple says the publication by Closer breached their privacy.
The French Prosecutor's Office is now to decide whether a full investigation of the royals' claim is merited.
The photographs were taken while the duchess was sunbathing on a private holiday with her husband at the French chateau of the Queen's nephew, Lord Linley, in Provence, earlier this month.
The decision to begin the preliminary criminal inquiry follows a formal complaint by the royals to prosecutors, with aides saying they were looking for proceedings against both the magazine and the photographer who took the pictures.
In their separate civil application to a court in Nanterre near Paris, the royals are asking for an injunction to force Closer's owners to hand over the images to prevent further publication, or face a daily fine of 10,000 euros (£8,000).
A lawyer for Closer earlier claimed the royal couple's reaction was disproportionate.
In court on Monday, Aurelien Hamelle, the lawyer representing Prince William and Catherine, said the scenes captured were intimate and personal and had no place on the front page of a magazine.
He said the couple could not have known they were being photographed, adding it would only have been possible to see them with a long lens.
In response, Delphine Pando, representing Closer, said topless photographs were no longer considered shocking in modern society and denied the chateau was inaccessible to public view.
She also said the magazine did not hold the rights to the pictures, so it could not be proved that the magazine intended to republish them.
The BBC's Paris correspondent Christian Fraser said most lawyers seemed to agree that under strict French law the pictures represented an undisputed breach of privacy.
Under French law, the damages related to legal proceedings could run into tens of thousands of euros and, in theory, the magazine editor and photographer could be sent to jail for a year.
Royal tour
British newspaper has printed the pictures.
But Italian magazine Chi - along with Closer, part of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Mondadori media group - printed a special edition on Monday featuring more than 20 pages of the photographs.
Meanwhile, Irish Daily Star editor Michael O'Kane has been suspended while an internal investigation is carried out into the publication of the photographs.
Currently on a Diamond Jubilee tour of South-east Asia and the South Pacific, the royal couple travel on Tuesday to the island nation of Tuva
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