London –
has paid
NDS $18.9 million for damages, concluding a long lawsuit that was finally
decided on Jan. 23 when the Supreme Court refused to hear an EchoStar petition,
NDS revealed Monday.
pointed out that as sole prevailing
party in the litigation, EchoStar failed to meet the legal definition of a
prevailing party on any of its claims.
“This brings an end to this long drawn-out process in which we
vehemently denied all allegations of piracy which were made against us over a
decade ago,” said Abe Peled, NDS Group executive chairman. “Piracy is an issue
throughout the industry and injurious to all in the value chain. It is only
with the active anti-piracy efforts of companies such as ourselves that the
pay-TV industry is able to evolve and continue to enable people to enjoy
premium TV viewing.”
The lawsuit was originally started in 2003, when EchoStar filed a
$2 billion claim against NDS, alleging that in the ’90s NDS was responsible for
the compromise of EchoStar’s satellite television programming platform through
the posting of code on the DR7 website.
In its defense, NDS established that NDS played no part in the
compromise of EchoStar’s security system.
In August 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court stated in its decision that
“EchoStar did not succeed ‘on any significant issue’ or ‘achieve any of the benefit
it sought in bringing suit’ under the Communications Act.”
The Ninth Circuit awarded NDS $18 million and concluded: “There
is no question that NDS successfully defended against all of EchoStar’s claims
based on or related to its theory that NDS was responsible for the compromise
of EchoStar’s satellite television programming security system.”
