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An appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a patent lawsuit filed against Live Nation, Ticketmaster, law firm Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, the MLB, and others.
Live-Fi Technologies CEO Amy Weissbrod Gurvey submitted that suit to a California federal court in 2023, and following multiple twists and turns, a dismissal decision came down in 2025. Clocking in at nearly 270 pages with exhibits – including about 50 pages for the amended complaint itself – the legal action covered more than a few bases.
Owing to the multitude of moving parts at hand, we’ll have to settle for a partial summary here. The short-ish version is that the self-represented attorney plaintiff possesses a “valuable patent portfolio…comprised of apparatuses, methods and screen analytics that disclose the standard essential algorithms for ticketing management,” according to the 2023 action.
Letting Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s March 2025 partial-dismissal order take the wheel for a moment, Weissbrod Gurvey was previously employed by the aforementioned Cowan.
Per the legal text, the firm “agreed to assist” the plaintiff with electronic ticketing patent applications, obtained “access to” the individual’s “confidential information regarding her inventions, contacts, and clients,” and then terminated her employment.
“Contrary to its promises, Cowan did not file a proper patent application on Weissbrod’s behalf, and instead filed defective excerpts of an application and then withdrew the defective filings,” the judge summarized of the filing party’s position.
As such, the suit accused the defendants not only of patent infringement, but of copyright infringement, unfair competition, “and acts undertaken in furtherance of a RICO patent fraud conspiracy” that allegedly prevented the plaintiff from receiving a patent hearing for some 13 years.
Back to the appeals panel’s decision, three circuit judges affirmed the district court’s dismissal order on procedural grounds.
“Ms. Gurvey not only failed to timely respond to the motions to dismiss within the default fourteen-day deadline, but she failed to respond after the district court gave her a lengthy extension,” the newly published decision reads.
“In her filings,” the document states, “Ms. Gurvey repeatedly emphasizes that she is a California attorney in good standing. Her extensive litigation history in both this case and the related New York cases demonstrates that Ms. Gurvey is well acquainted with trial court litigation. Her failure to respond cannot be attributed to an oversight by an inexperienced pro se litigant.”
Regarding these New York cases, Gurvey in 2024 sued New York Governor Kathy Hochul and multiple others in what Judge Anne M. Nardacci described as the latest in a line of “decades-long litigation efforts in both state and federal court.”
“Though it is difficult to surmise the exact nature of Plaintiff’s allegations, liberally construed,” Judge Nardacci proceeded, “the Amended Complaint alleges that these patents ‘were used, outsourced, (and) copied’ by the State of New York and its agencies through its agreements and ventures with various private entities, and therefore, New York officers infringed Plaintiff’s patent rights.”
Dismissal aside, the action’s docket remains active; Gurvey in late September submitted a motion seeking Judge Nardacci’s “recusal and mandatory vacatur of orders since 2024-2026 based on fraud on the court.”
Additionally, Gurvey last year filed a different complaint against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in Washington, D.C. While the case was tossed in March 2026 “for failure to prosecute and failure to effectuate service,” its own docket remains active as well.
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