Law360, New York (January 16, 2019, 7:45 PM EST) -- A Manhattan jury mulled Wednesday whether to

award entrepreneur Shmuel "Sam" Sherman damages after his company accused a rival of poaching
what Sherman calls revolutionary software that allows resale brokers to easily reprice inventory in the
multibillion-dollar market for sports and entertainment tickets.

Jurors worked for more than two hours on the Broker Genius Inc. CEO's breach of contract and
misappropriation claims targeting defendant Drew Gainor and his company, Seat Scouts LLC, after a
sometimes-bitter trial before U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein that opened Jan. 3.

Jurors were set to resume their work on Thursday morning.

Wednesday afternoon, they sent a note asking for information about Broker Genius' financials and
indicated they would likely complete their deliberations Thursday.

The companies charge ticket brokers to use autopricing software, promising it will boost sales by
keeping them competitive as prices change. Broker Genius' website says it has assisted in pricing some
$2 billion of ticket inventory since its 2013 launch. In May, Judge Stein blocked Gainor's "Command
Center" competitor, launched in 2017, from operating after finding Sherman's claims likely to prevail.

Sherman says his AutoPricer product cost $4.5 million to develop and improve over more than three
years. Gainor's alleged move to poach AutoPricer after taking a trial subscription in 2016 cost Broker
Genius sales, goodwill among clients and forced it to lay off workers, Sherman says.

Gainor's lawyers reject that claim, saying Sherman's AutoPricer is little more than an unpatented
algorithm that can be built on the cheap and is hardly revolutionary. They also reject the central
assertion that Gainor breached Broker Genius' terms of use, which forbids poaching, claiming Gainor has
no memory of agreeing to them and arguing it likely was a sales rep at the plaintiff company who
checked off the terms box for Gainor.

"They don't want you to read the terms of use," Gainor's lawyer Christoph C. Heisenberg told the jury at
closing arguments earlier in the day.

Gainor's team then called Sherman a "monopolist," accusing him of resorting to onerous terms of use
and contract litigation to bully competitors. Sherman has prevailed in two lawsuits against other
competitors, neither of which went to trial.
Gainor's team pointed to various bits of autopricing technology, both in the ticket industry and
elsewhere, that predate both litigants' products.

"Mr. Sherman's supposed creation of this product is not a function of his own wherewithal," Heisenberg
said. "It was built off the backs of others."

In all events, according to Gainor's team, the assertion that somehow Seat Scouts cost Broker Genius
millions of dollars is false. Heisenberg pointed to testimony that suggested early versions of AutoPricer
only cost a few thousand dollars to launch.

Countering Gainor was Sherman's counsel, Veronica Munoz, who fired back at the monopolist fling by
calling the defendant a "parasite."

"He was dipping into AutoPricer the whole time while building Command Center," Munoz said, referring
to Gainor's now-enjoined competing product.

The plaintiff's team then accused Gainor of lying throughout the litigation, including about a laptop that
Gainor initially refused to produce before being ordered to do so by the judge.

"Behavior like this added a half a million dollars to this case," Munoz told the jury.

Munoz also suggested to the jury that the reason the plaintiff's team couldn't point to an email that
proved Gainor accepted the Broker Genius terms was because Gainor may have hidden it from lawyers
during discovery.

But, she said, computerized records show the terms of use box had been checked.

"Mr. Gainor obviously didn't read the terms of use," Munoz told the jury. "Under the law, that doesn't
matter."

Broker Genius Inc. is represented by Veronica M. Munoz, Daniel J. Melman and Miriam K. Tyrell of Pearl
Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz LLP.
Seat Scouts LLC and Gainor are represented by George R. Hinckley Jr. and Christoph C. Heisenberg of
Hinckley & Heisenberg LLP.

The case is Broker Genius Inc. v. Seat Scouts LLC et al., case number 1:17-cv-08627, in the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York.