Clash over pay TV codes intensifies for Murdoch and Messier units

NDS is again in the spotlight today after claims from an employee within the News Corp group, the company's parent, that it did indeed leak codes for set-top boxes produced for rival networks run by Canal Plus in France and ITV Digital in the UK.

Canal Plus, owned by media group Vivendi Universal, has brought a $1bn case against News Corp. Cracked smartcards have meant as many as one in ten pay TV viewers aren't paying proper subscriptions for channels, experts have said.

In a written deposition to a California court, Oliver Kommerling, a security consultant and employee of a company majority owned by NDS, named an NDS staffer who is supposed to have posted the rival codes on the internet.

However, as part of a statement to the court due to be heard next week and obtained by the FT, NDS calls the lawsuit "an attempt by an inept competitor to shift the blame for its incompetence, to damage its skilled competitor behind the shield of the litigation privilege and to extract an unfair price in merger negotiations".

The clash is also significant because at the top of the two organisations squaring off - News Corp and Vivendi Universal - sit two of the highest-profile media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and Jean-Marie Messier.