Leveraging his technical proficiency and prior software engineering career, Andrew (A.J.) Tibbetts provides business-oriented IP legal counseling for software, AI and electronics-based technologies. His strategic approach incorporates open source practices and trade secret policies alongside patents, and he advises clients on licensing, enforcement, diligence, and defense against infringement accusations. A.J.’s patents have directly led to clients closing funding rounds, and software patents A.J. wrote for clients have survived PTAB invalidity challenges and been enforced against competitors. He co-authored influential amicus briefs cited favorably by the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Circuit Court of Appeals relating to patentability of software.

A.J. counsels traditional software and electronics companies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) across a variety of domains, networking/telecom/CDN, fintech (including market data and infrastructure), blockchain and distributed ledger tech, speech recognition, natural language processing, and more. As “software eats the world,” a growing number of companies look to A.J. for advice protecting new investments in software and data science, including life sciences, biopharma, medtech, medical devices, radiology, digital health, health care IT, and healthtech companies. A.J. advises a broad clientele, from multinational corporations to small enterprises, serves on the boards of MassMEDIC and HealthTech Build, as well as on a digital health advisory panel for MassBio.

Prior to his legal career, A.J. worked as a programmer for IBM/Lotus, contributing to the development of Lotus Notes. He also served for several years as the lead developer for a sales analytics tool, overseeing its end-to-end implementation, including planning, coding, documentation, testing, and roll-out.