Attorney Kevin Christopher is the founder and Venture Lead of Rockridge Venture Law®, a B Corp intellectual property and technology firm. Kevin is a registered patent attorney, active entrepreneur, and National Science Foundation (NSF) evaluator for the research hub Center for Green Solid-State Electric Power Generation and Storage (CEPS). He is a Tennessee Bar Association Leadership Lawyer, and board member to several environmental and social impact nonprofits. In 2019, Kevin Christopher was nationally recognized as a Top Business Leader by Conscious Company Magazine and SuperLawyer, and was honored as a member of Leadership Tennessee.
Attorney Kevin Christopher is a corporate attorney, patent attorney, and trademark attorney. Specifically, his practice areas include: patent and trademark prosecution, licensing and litigation; corporate law, with an emphasis on benefit corporations, socially responsible businesses and high-growth emergent companies; government contracts, with an emphasis on innovation funding; corporate and investor financing; and, technology commercialization.
Prior to founding RVL®, Attorney Kevin Christopher led bioscience and biotech development activities with top secret security clearance at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. His copyright and patent licensing portfolio included anti-infectives, drug delivery systems, neural interface devices, sequencing software, and other state of the art technologies. Kevin’s commercialization of a microbiome analysis chip resulted in a Federal Licensing Consortium deal of the year award. Kevin managed a 40+ patent neural interface portfolio that was licensed as the groundbreaking Argus II artificial retina, and additionally directed to multi-region neuron mapping and as a tool for the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Early in his career, Kevin commercialized innovations of several Nobel awardees in the technology transfer office of UC Berkeley. In addition to his corporate R&D portfolio of technologies ranging from metal organic frameworks to robotic surgery systems, Kevin led partnerships at NSF research centers Berkeley Sensor Actuator Center (BSAC), Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc), and Reinventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt).
As an entrepreneur, Attorney Kevin Christopher has co-founded or acted as key advisor for a broad range of startups, including those with algal protein production, biomass energy conversion, men’s toiletries, microbiome editing skincare, and hepatocellular carcinoma diagnostic technologies. Kevin has served as an NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) application review panelist, an NIH SBIR consultant, and was part of the inaugural SBA Innovation Corps.
As a student, Kevin was a teaching assistant to former State of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm at Berkeley Law, outstanding scholar in the UC Hastings Law and Bioscience program, judicial extern for U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer, law clerk for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and regularly featured poet in To An Unknown God – A Journal of Christian Thought at Berkeley. After graduating from law school, Kevin continued his education through the UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group and as a research member of the Berkeley Rural Energy Group. He has completed executive education programs in venture capital through the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.