Andrew Updegrove

Andrew Updegrove is a founding partner of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm. He 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. 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.

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 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.

He has been retained by many of the largest corporations in the world to assist in setting up international consortia and foundations, and by both multinational companies as well as government agencies to advise them in setting their standards and open source-related policies and goals. He has also provided testimony to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission on standard setting and intellectual property rights, and 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 2010, he provided testimony on the future of the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) to the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation. He also serves as an expert witness in standards-related litigation.