NDS hits back at Canal Plus fraud claims. (Newsdesk).

NDS has announced that it will file a counterclaim once it has fully reviewed the allegations made by Canal Plus. The French pay-TV giant has filed a $1bn lawsuit against London based NDS, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Canal Plus alleges that NDS illegally extracted

and copied the code from its digital TV smart card and then passed it on to a web site frequented by counterfeiters. The company claims that NDS conducted a huge illegal operation between 1998 and 1999 that included large amounts of money and sophisticated resources sending its smart cards to an NDS laboratory in Israel for analysis. Canal Plus states that the software was then published on the Internet in March 1999 allowing criminal organisations to flood the market with counterfeit cards providing NDS with a competitive advantage to obtain digital television operator contracts.

Francois-Carayol, vice president of Canal Plus Group and chairman and CEO of Canal Plus Technologies said, "NDS has engaged in an illegal act to harm Canal Plus' competitive position in the digital television market." The company claims that it has solid evidence that will prove that the operation was a corporate effort and not the action of an individual.

In a statement NDS branded the lawsuit outrageous and baseless and reiterated its long-standing commitment to eradicating piracy from the conditional access industry. NDS denied any involvement with the company's piracy problems and suggested that Canal Plus has not taken sufficient measures to protect itself.

The civil case is expected to begin in the next few weeks.