Vivendi Universal pay-television subsidiary Canal Plus has filed a legal action against smart card business NDS, alleging it facilitated piracy operations against the French group's digital TV services.
The action filed in the US District Court of California claims NDS, which is 79.2 per cent-owned by Mr Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, worked to crack a security code used by Canal Plus to give its customers access to digital television signals.
Canal Plus alleges NDS had "spent large amounts of money and resources to extract the code from Canal Plus's digital TV smart card and then provided the code to a website frequented by counterfeiters. After the code was published on the Internet, criminal organisations flooded the market with counterfeit cards".
Canal Plus said it was claiming more than $1 billion in damages from NDS for violating copyright rules and hurting its business.
The Paris-based group said it believed NDS started its anti-competitive behaviour about three years ago, using its R&D facility in Israel to work on the code.
Canal Plus said the action was filed in California because that was where the pirate website was operating. It would not name the site.
NDS declined to comment.
Financial Times Service