FRIENDSWOOD — A Friendswood man’s ticket-brokering business won’t be allowed to use computer programs to purchase event tickets online after a U.S. District Court issued an injunction against it and other ticket sellers.

Ticketmaster, the world’s largest ticket retailer, sued newly elected Friendswood councilman Jim Barr and his company, Ticket Attractions, accusing the company of using computer software programmed to buy thousands of Ticketmaster tickets the moment they go on sale.

Barr said his company agreed to the injunction to save itself legal bills and hadn’t done anything wrong. He claimed the company never used the criticized software.

“Would you agree not to do something you’re already not doing?” he said. “It has been settled. It is resolved. We don’t cut in line.”

Ticketmaster had no comment on the issue, spokesman Albert Lopez said.

The lawsuit claimed the company and other brokers used software to buy tickets faster than any human could possibly enter the information needed to buy tickets from the Ticketmaster Web site.

It’s programs such as those, which bypass Web site regulations that limit the number of tickets one person can purchase and require the buyer to recognize and enter in letters, that have been blamed for tickets to highly sought-after concerts such as Hannah Montana selling out within minutes, then reappearing on other Web sites at inflated prices.

Ticket Attractions sells concert, theater and sporting event tickets on its Web site. In some cases, the tickets are marked up several times the original selling price.

For example, Ticket Attractions operates a separate Web site, www.wicked tickets.com, to sell tickets to the musical “Wicked.” Tickets for a weeknight in June at the Chicago show were $100 to $255 on the Ticket Attraction Web site.

On Ticketmaster’s Web site, tickets to the same show ranged from $22.50 to $122.50.

But Barr said his company didn’t use the software to get the tickets.

Ticketmaster has another lawsuit against RMG Technologies, the company accused of marketing the Web site-cracking software.

Efforts to reach RMG officials were unsuccessful.