Gesmer Updegrove LLP

Corporate

Partner

Like his partners and associates, Andy helps CEOs, management teams and their investors build successful organizations. Regionally, he’s been a pioneer in providing business-minded legal counsel and strategic advice to high-tech companies since 1979. On the global stage, he’s represented, and usually helped launch, more than 225 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia, including some of the largest and most influential standard setting and open source software organizations in the world. His clients of both types rely on his experience and vision in making their own business and strategic decisions.

Andrew Updegrove has a broad range of experience in representing both mature and emerging high-technology companies of all types in all aspects of their legal affairs. Since 1988, he has also represented and in most cases helped structure more than 220 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia, including some of the largest open source and standard setting organizations in the world. He spends a significant part of his time giving strategic advice to clients of the firm.

His leadership in collaboration related matters is widely recognized. Since 2004 he has served as the sole representative of the consortium community on working groups updating the United States National Standards Strategy maintained by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). He has served on the Boards of Directors of ANSI (multiple terms) and its Executive Committee, the Linux Foundation, Workcred, a non-profit promoting and supporting workforce credentialing, and the Free Standards Group, the developer of the Linux Standards Base. He has also served on the Board of Advisors of HL7, an ANSI accredited developer of electronic health standards for clinical and administrative data, Open Source for America, a group promoting the use of open source software by government, and the Center for Open Science, which hosts open research, and is a Fellow of SES, the Society of Standards Professionals, and a charter Fellow of OpenForum Europe, an organization promoting the use of open source and standards throughout Europe. In 2011, he was appointed to a National Academies of Science Committee commissioned by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to advise it on intellectual property policies around the world. His clients in the standards and open source areas include the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), IETF Trust, The Linux Foundation, and PCI Security Standards Council.

During his career, he has also counseled hundreds of emerging high technology and other fast growth clients with respect to their strategic and legal needs, assisting them in their progress from a concept to a mature company. In the course of this representation, he has critiqued their business plans, advised on structuring their businesses, introduced them to financing sources, represented them in angel, venture capital, bank and public financings, advised them on behalf of their intellectual property programs, negotiated mergers and acquisitions on their behalf, and assisted them in many other aspects of their legal and business affairs.

He has also represented mature companies in many areas, including with respect to financings, mergers and acquisitions, the redeployment of services and assets onto the Internet, and complex intellectual property matters. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of financing, emerging company issues, and mergers and acquisitions.

In the consortium area, he has been retained by many of the largest technology and technology dependent corporations in the world to assist them in setting up international standard setting and technology promotional organizations. He has also advised Fortune 500 companies and governmental agencies with respect to setting internal standards setting policies and goals. Recognized internationally as an expert on the topics of standard setting, intellectual property policies and consortia, he has written and spoken widely, as well as provided testimony to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, on these topics. He has also written and filed pro bono “friend of the court” briefs in major standards-related litigation before the Federal Circuit Court, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Trade Commission.

In May of 2002, he conceived and launched ConsortiumInfo.org, an extensive website intended to provide the most comprehensive and detailed source of news and information on the Internet on standard-setting and forming and maintaining consortia. Among other features, it includes the Standards MetaLibrary, with over 1,900 categorized and abstracted articles, and the most complete listing and index of standards organizations in existence. Besides his efforts at the ConsortiumInfo.org Website, he writes and speaks frequently both domestically and internationally on topics involving standards, open source software and consortia. In 2005 he was selected to receive the ANSI President’s Award for Journalism for his work.

Mr. Updegrove is a graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School. He is a certified mediator, and a member of the Panel of Mediators of the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council. Outside the office, he is or has been a director of the Gloucester Stage Company, the Treasurer and a Director of the Vinalhaven [Maine] Land Trust, a Director of Lifebridge (an organization dedicated to ending homelessness in Salem, Massachusetts), and the Clerk and Moderator of the Old North Church in Marblehead. In a prior life, he was the founder and owner of a successful architectural stained glass studio. More recently, he has authored six thrillers, with over 100,000 downloads. He continues to be the adoring father of a 32 year-old daughter and the loving husband of a wife whose age is better left unstated.

Standards Engineering Society (SES)

American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)

Cornell University Law School, J.D.

Yale University, B.A.