git : empty ident name (for <>) not allowed

Question

I was applying a diff file of an opensource project on the top of my repository using git-am :

 git am -3 < /Downloads/refactorWork.diff

but

Answer 1

Moved out of comment to the accepted answer

When you click "Save unified diff" in TortoiseGit, you must right-click the created .diff or .patch file and select TortiseGit→Review/apply single patch instead of Apply Patch Serial....

Put the diff file in the root of the folder to which files you want to apply the patch to, first.