Australian software pirate Hew Griffiths faces more than a year in a US jail after he was sentenced on Friday on a charge of conspiring to commit a criminal copyright infringement.

Following his extradition in February, one of the first extraditions to the US for an intellectual property offence, 44-year-old Griffiths pleaded guilty in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, and was sentenced to 51 months in jail, Sydney Morning Herald reports.

But Judge Claude Hilton took into account almost three years Griffiths had spent in Australian jails while fighting extradition, meaning he will have to serve only 15 months.

Griffiths, who used the alias Bandido, admits he was the brains behind the counterfeit software ring called DrinkOrDie, which illegally copied software, computer games, music and videos worth millions of dollars, although he earned nothing from the piracy.