Practice/Organization Description
Gesmer Updegrove LLP is a Boston-based law firm that specializes in representing technology clients. Our clients are individual entrepreneurs, private and public companies, venture capitalists and major educational non-profit institutions. We meet the evolving needs of our clients by bringing our extensive experience in representing companies engaged in cutting-edge areas of business, including software technologies, the Internet, electronic commerce and medical technologies. Ninety-five percent of our practice is in the technology sector and our firm represents one of the largest technology practice groups in New England. At the same time, we bring the focus and attention of a smaller firm to the representation of our clients.
Our firm’s mission is to provide outstanding services as both business and legal advisors, informed by our in-depth knowledge of what it takes to create and grow successful businesses. We take pride in the talent of our attorneys and professional staff, the depth of their expertise and the teamwork they employ in understanding our clients' business objectives, resolving problems and disputes, and helping our clients reach their business goals. We are dedicated to using our legal skills, business and financial contacts and judgment to helping our clients succeed, because we know that if our clients succeed we will succeed as well.
A large part of our practice focuses on helping entrepreneurial companies utilizing software, Internet and electronic commerce technologies get started, protect their intellectual property assets, find financing, and structure and grow their businesses. We have extensive experience in private and venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions and complex corporate partnership, joint venture and technology transactions. We have worked with many hundreds of technology companies that have gone from start-up through acquisition or initial public offering, or which continue as successful businesses under the ownership and management of their founders.
We are experts in the developing legal areas of e-commerce and Internet technologies, including issues related to electronic signatures and contracting, privacy, web site liability, domain name protection, federal and state laws regulating e-commerce, and the negotiation of legal agreements and contracts that reflect cutting-edge methods of doing business on the Internet.
In addition to technology companies and investors, we represent large public and private companies and institutions in their technology undertakings, whether they are contractual dealings with outside developers and suppliers of technologies that are critical to the internal operations of the company, the redeployment of bricks and mortar businesses over the Internet, or the technological commercialization of products or services, as in the case of new ventures involving electronic commerce. In addition, we have assisted scores of the top technology companies in the world to establish standard-setting consortia, and our firm is a national leader in this area of practice.
We also have extensive expertise in protecting our clients’ business assets (including, most often, their intellectual property assets) through litigation counseling and, when necessary, aggressive, cost-effective advocacy. While our goal always is to help our clients resolve disputes and avoid litigation, we are well equipped to represent our clients in the state and federal courts, as well as in the context of alternative dispute forums such as arbitration and mediation.
Our practice encompasses services in a variety of additional areas that are needed by our clients, including trademark, copyright and patent filings, tax advice, international matters and employment law counseling (and litigation when needed).
Professional Associations & Memberships
Gesmer Updegrove LLP sponsors www.ConsortiumInfo.org, the most complete and comprehensive site on standard setting and consortia on the Internet. We also distribute, free of charge, the Consortium Standards Bulletin, a monthly eJournal of news and analysis on the same topics.
Andrew Updegrove, who leads the Consortium and Standard Setting Practice, is nationally recognized for his leadership in the development of consortium structures, best practices, and intellectual property rights policies. He is also the creator and Editor of ConsortiumInfo.org and the Consortium Standards Bulletin.
