Irdeto buys antipiracy company BayTSP

US conditional access company Irdeto has acquired online anti-piracy company BayTSP to expand its security portfolio.

Financial terms were not disclosed. But SatelliteFinance has learnt that BayTSP was financially advised by Innovation Advisors, while DLA Piper acted as Irdeto’s legal adviser and Deloitte as Irdeto’s financial adviser.

In a statement, Graham Kill, CEO of Irdeto, said: “The acquisition of BayTSP allows us to extend further our trusted, end-to-end security partnering offering for media companies, and also initiates a brand new ear of growth into revenue-generating, business insights for our customers with the valuable media consumption data we now have access to.”

Following the transaction, the BayTSP team will remain located in California.

This deal comes a few months after Irdeto snapped up the BD+ technology assets from Rovi Corporation for a reported US$25m in cash. BD+ technology is central providing digital rights management for Blu-ray discs.

“This acquisition further proves our commitment to establishing dynamic security as the industry standard for Hollywood studios taking advantage of the Media 3.0 opportunity – consumer demand for content anywhere, on any device and at any time,” said Kill in early July.

Irdeto, which is co-headquartered in Amsterdam and Beijing, has made a number of acquisitions in recent years as it seeks to strengthen its position in an expanding conditional access sector.

The industry has grown beyond the traditional secure hardware platforms like smart card chips to new platforms such as IPTV and mobile TV. In late 2007, it spent US$72.5m on Cloakware, which develops technology that makes security inseparable from the software it protects, to better serve these markets.

Irdeto is a subsidiary of South African media group Naspers.