News Corporation majority-owned technology company NDS has seen off a $1bn lawsuit alleging piracy and hacking relating to the encryption system for US satellite company Dish Network, with a US jury yesterday awarding just $1,000 in damages.

A US federal court jury in California broadly cleared NDS, which provides signal encryption technology for News Corp companies including BSkyB, awarding Dish, formerly known as EchoStar, just $1,000 in damages out of the $1bn it had sought.

NDS said that the fine was actual damages of $45.69 or, in statutory damages, of $1,000.

Yesterday's damages award stemmed from a single test incident with a Dish satellite TV smart card.

The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2003, was brought by Dish Network owner EchoStar and Nagrastar, a joint venture between EchoStar and Swiss digital TV company Kudelski.

NDS was alleged to have hired computer hackers to break the encryption of smart cards used by EchoStar's Dish Network and post a how-to guide on the internet so people could receive satellite TV for free.

However, in its defence NDS said that it uses former hackers to stop piracy and that it had found a piracy ring in Canada that had cracked Dish's encrypted signal.

"NDS is pleased that the four-week long trial in which NDS faced baseless allegations, widely repeated and exaggerated to suggest the involvement of our majority shareholder News Corporation, has ended in a resounding affirmation of NDS and its business ethics and proper conduct," said NDS in a statement.

The News Corp subsidiary added that it had been on the forefront of fighting pay-TV piracy and had invested "hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve our current record of zero piracy".

"We have stated consistently throughout the course of this trial that the piracy of EchoStar was the result of inferior technology arising from inadequate investment in research and development by Kudelski," the company said. "This position has been validated with today's verdict."

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