Andrew Updegrove

Massachusetts

Gesmer Updegrove LLP
40 Broad Street
Boston, MA 02109
United States

Tel: 617.531.8335

Email: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
Web: www.gesmer.com

Professional Biography

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 200 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.

In the course of over 40 years in practice, Andy has counseled many hundreds of startup and emerging high-technology and other fast growth clients of all types – always with the goal of helping them realize the promise and economic value of their ideas. In the course of guiding them, he:

  • critiques business plans
  • advises on structuring their businesses
  • introduces them to financing sources
  • represents them in angel, venture capital and bank financings
  • counsels them on intellectual property programs
  • advises them on their growth and sale strategies
  • negotiates and closes mergers and acquisitions on their behalf
  • guides them in all other aspects of their legal and business affairs — from inception through liquidity

Andy is recognized internationally as a leading expert on the topics of standard setting, intellectual property policies, consortia governance and open source development, and has provided standards-related testimony before bodies of Congress, state legislatures, and the European Commission, and in hearings convened by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. He has also served as a Director on the boards of some of the most influential organizations of this type, including the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the Free Standards Group (FSG), and the Linux Foundation; as a member of a National Academies of Science committee commissioned by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; as a Board of Advisors member of HL7, an accredited EHR standards developer, and of Open Software for America, an advocacy group promoting the use of free and open source software by the U.S. Federal Government; and as a Fellow of the OpenForum Academy, a European think tank advocating openness in government processes and data. He also advises Fortune 500 companies in developing their internal standards setting policies and goals; government regulatory agencies in connection with standards-related enforcement matters; and serves as an expert witness in standards-related litigation.

The Business Law Practice

Each year Gesmer works with entrepreneurs to help form, grow, and maintain successful businesses in the high tech sector. We leverage all of our Practice Areas and our extensive networks of service providers, personnel sources, and venture capital, angel, and institutional investors, as well as our business and high tech industry knowledge to identify and implement the vital strategies that new businesses need to succeed. More than legal counselors, we are valued business advisors for our early stage clients.

We work with new and emerging businesses to create the most advantageous business structure and anticipate future challenges. Our attorneys have reviewed and critiqued thousands of business plans, and are able to help our clients refine their business models in order to create successful enterprises.

About Gesmer Updegrove LLP

Gesmer Updegrove prides itself as being among the most respected, efficient, and bespoke firms in the region. For decades, the firm has provided the highest quality work at a fraction of the cost charged by national and international firms of comparable quality.

Whether you…

  • Are a startup or established company navigating myriad and increasingly complex legal issues;
  • Require representation on a financing, sale, or acquisition;
  • Need guidance through the labyrinth of intellectual property rights; or
  • Want the most sophisticated business litigation counseling and representation available

…you’ve reached the right place.

For over thirty years, Gesmer Updegrove has built its reputation and practice one client at a time. Our solutions are “made to measure,” reflect your unique requirements, and are engineered by among the most talented and trusted lawyers in New England.