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The contest, organised by Movie Labs, the R&D arm of the MPAA, asked each fingerprinting system to identify 1,000 movie files by their "fingerprints", patterns of data unique to each movie.

The files varied in quality, from HD through internet downloads to bootlegs recorded on camcorders. Three of the 12 systems managed to identify more than 90% of the files with no false positives.

The MPAA won't say who the winner is, though according to the LA Times the honour goes to Voible, a Californian startup that pipped established digital content specialists including Gracenote and Audible Magic.

Steve Weinstein, CEO Movie Labs, says the next step is real world testing, acknowledging that while "this stuff works", it may behave very differently when operating on a commercial scale.