jlgutierrez-istockphoto-com-tickets-
20 February 2017

Ticketmaster exec accused of hacking trade secrets

An executive at online ticket seller Ticketmaster has been accused of hacking computers and appropriating trade secrets by a rival.

On February 16, Songkick filed an amended complaint at the US District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division.

Songkick is a platform that allows artists to sell tickets directly to fans before they go on general sale. It merged with CrowdSurge in June 2015.

Songkick claimed that a former CrowdSurge executive accessed CrowdSurge’s protected computers and improperly acquired and used CrowdSurge’s trade secrets and confidential information.

The accused senior vice president, Stephen Mead, left CrowdSurge with “more than 85,000 CrowdSurge documents” and joined a Ticketmaster-owned company called TicketWeb, the claim said.

But, according to the claim, it didn’t end there: Mead provided the confidential information to his colleagues at the new company and provided them with unlawful access to CrowdSurge’s computers.

“This was part of Mead’s personal vendetta (and Ticketmaster’s collective desire) to ‘cut [CrowdSurge] off at the knees’, ‘bring down the hammer’ on CrowdSurge, and ultimately copy and thereby defeat CrowdSurge,” alleged the claim.

It also claimed that Mead had sent his new colleagues URLs to webpages of ticketing “stores” that CrowdSurge had customised for specific artist clients and potential artist clients.

In December 2015, Songkick filed its original complaint against Ticketmaster, alleging anti-competitive conduct and antitrust violations. Songkick claimed that Ticketmaster’s merger with concert promotion company Live Nation “not only removed Live Nation as a threat to Ticketmaster’s monopoly power, but enhanced that dominance”.

In a statement obtained by WIPR, Ticketmaster claimed that the original antitrust lawsuit was “baseless” and, since then, the case has gone “poorly” for Songkick.

Songkick had sought a preliminary injunction against its rival, but failed to obtain it.

The court also granted Ticketmaster's motion to dismiss one of Songkick’s antitrust claims.

“In the face of those adverse rulings, Songkick has been forced to conjure up a new set of dubious arguments and theories, resulting in the amended complaint they recently filed,” said Ticketmaster.

It added that the complaint is based on the “alleged misappropriation of information that Songkick did not even try to keep secret, and in some cases could not have kept secret, and in some cases shared with artist managers that work for Live Nation”.

Ticketmaster added that the claims have no legal merit and that the company and Live Nation will continue to “vigorously” defend this case.

Did you enjoy reading this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk