Kevin Buckley, J.D.

Founder & Managing Shareholder

kevin@torreypineslaw.com
main: +1 (858) 869-1250

Kevin Buckley is the founder and managing shareholder of Torrey Pines Law Group. A registered patent attorney, he advises artificial intelligence and life sciences companies and their investors on patents, transactions, FDA regulation, and intellectual property disputes. His clients range from Nasdaq-listed enterprises and multinational manufacturers to emerging innovators. He is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded ten successful companies, several of which he has since exited. As a member of the executive management teams of two AI companies and a biopharmaceutical company, he helped bring each company’s products to market. In those roles, he hired and managed international law firms and regulatory consultants, so he knows what it means to sit on both sides of the table.

Kevin’s practice spans pure artificial intelligence, from machine learning and large language models to enterprise software, and pure life sciences, from biologics and small molecules to diagnostics and medical devices. What sets him apart is the territory where the two meet: convergent technologies that combine AI, software, devices, and biology, paired with hands-on FDA regulatory expertise. Few lawyers work comfortably in all three. Kevin protects the product and plans its path to market at the same time. Over nearly three decades, he has prepared and prosecuted hundreds of patents and applications worldwide and advised more than 100 AI-enabled technology companies and hundreds of startups, from formation through financing, FDA clearance, and launch.

Under Kevin’s leadership, Chambers and Partners has ranked Torrey Pines Law Group among California’s leading intellectual property firms in 2025 and 2026, noting its “strong patent practice with an impressive client list featuring standout names in technology, biotechnology, AI and pharmaceuticals.” The firm was also Highly Commended as IP Boutique of the Year at the 2026 LSPN Awards. Kevin was named one of Certified Patent Valuation Analyst’s Top 50 Patent Drafters & Prosecutors of 2027, and the recognition is grounded in numbers. His applications have been independently valued in the seven and eight figures, based largely on the applications themselves. Earlier in his career, the St. Louis Business Journal named him to its “40 Under Forty” and “Who’s Who in Technology” lists, and the Philadelphia Business Journal recognized him among Philadelphia’s Best Lawyers.

Legal Practice

Kevin’s artificial intelligence practice centers on preparing and prosecuting comprehensive patent applications for machine learning, deep learning, and large language model technologies. He drafts them for international patentability and builds them to survive a challenge. He also advises AI companies on the questions that drive what their technology is worth: who owns the training data and the models, what to patent and what to keep as a trade secret, and how to use open-source software without inviting trouble. He helped obtain FDA clearance for the first AI-enabled software to assist in the detection of breast cancer, and he patented it as well.

In the life sciences, Kevin builds worldwide patent portfolios for biologics, small-molecule drugs, synthetic biology, diagnostics, medical devices, and digital health. Much of that work is lifecycle management for drugs, devices, and diagnostics, timing new filings to track product improvements and regulatory milestones so that protection lasts as long as the product does. For drugs, that means patent term extensions, Hatch-Waxman exclusivity, and a plan for the generic challenge that will eventually arrive.

Kevin has represented clients in multiple transactions individually valued at more than $1 billion. Working with his team and the client’s corporate counsel, he shapes the intellectual property and regulatory terms of licensing, collaboration, and data agreements, where much of a deal’s value is won or lost. He also leads the intellectual property and regulatory due diligence behind venture, growth-stage, and strategic investments by top venture capital firms and corporate investors, including transactions involving GV, Sequoia Capital, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. Much of this work crosses borders, from licensing between U.S. and European companies to in-licensing from China. For public companies, he has assisted with the intellectual property and clinical-regulatory sections of 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filings and with the due diligence behind S-1 registration statements for initial and follow-on offerings. Boards, general counsel, and executive teams rely on him to keep patent, regulatory, and business strategy pointed in the same direction.

In Kevin’s view, the best lawsuit is one his clients read about happening to someone else, and much of his disputes work is advice that keeps it that way. When one does arrive, his experience spans the full life of a federal lawsuit, from the complaint through claim construction, appeal, and petitions for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, along with appeals at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has been a member of the litigation teams in major patent, antitrust, and agricultural biotechnology cases, and his work has covered trade secret, trademark, copyright, Lanham Act, right of publicity, and unfair competition matters. He has been called as an expert witness on pharmaceutical patents in federal court, and he is preparing to serve as a mediator of intellectual property and technology disputes.

Representative Matters

• Lead intellectual property due diligence counsel for a Fortune 500 healthcare company’s nine-figure acquisition of a pharmaceutical technology company.
• Intellectual property counsel to a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company through its initial public offering on Nasdaq, including the intellectual property disclosures in its S-1 registration statement.
• Outside intellectual property counsel to a Nasdaq-listed technology company, managing its international patent portfolio.
• Intellectual property counsel in a joint venture between a synthetic biology company and a multibillion-dollar, publicly traded biopharmaceutical company, including its commercialization and co-development rights.
• Product clearance and due diligence for a Fortune 500 company’s abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) for a generic drug.
• Legal strategy for a major U.S. manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients to avoid significant liabilities under a license for its manufacturing process.
• Intellectual property due diligence for a leading venture capital firm investing in a deep-technology spinout from a multinational technology company.
• Intellectual property counsel to a synthetic biology company on a complex international license that included technology in-licensed from a prominent university, along with drafting and prosecution of the related patents.
• Lead intellectual property counsel, with responsibility for regulatory diligence, on the in-licensing of six biologic and small-molecule drug candidates from Chinese biotechnology companies and universities.
• Intellectual property counsel to an international biopharmaceutical company on repositioning a marketed drug for neurodegenerative disease. His patent strategy was a key foundation for the company’s later multibillion-dollar global licensing agreement.
• Freedom-to-operate, validity, and non-infringement analysis for an international specialty chemicals manufacturer.
• Patent protection and FDA clearance strategy for the first AI-enabled software to assist in the detection of breast cancer.

Background

Kevin’s executive career was measured in products on the market, not projections. At an AI medical imaging company, he helped bring two FDA-cleared breast cancer detection technologies to market. At an AI precision medicine company, he helped take the platform from concept to commercial sales. At a biopharmaceutical company, he was part of the leadership team that secured two oncology drug approvals in Japan and successfully saw four investigational new drug applications through FDA’s 30-day review.

At all three companies, Kevin managed relationships with investors and collaborators and structured the licensing of technology into and out of the company to maximize value and limit liability. The goal was simple: take risk off the table at every stage, whether legal, regulatory, or commercial. He also founded Tactica Ventures, an investment company that holds positions in select emerging technology and life sciences companies.

Kevin served as Chief Legal Officer of the research foundation of one of the largest universities in the United States. There, he oversaw board governance, technology transfer, patent prosecution, and patent litigation for a research program known for its laser, optics, and simulation technologies. He negotiated research and technology agreements with SpaceX and the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), along with grants and contracts with federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy.

In the public sector, Kevin was investment manager of a state technology investment corporation and helped draft a state constitutional amendment, the first of its kind in the nation, protecting the right to conduct stem cell research permitted under federal law. He has testified before the state legislature on technology commercialization bills he wrote, and parts of them are now law, down to the word “commercialization.” He was also a founding member of a statewide biotechnology industry association.

Kevin began his career as a research biochemist under three leaders in their fields. In the laboratory of Dr. Dennis A. Carson, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, he contributed to work improving the first drug to cure hairy cell leukemia. At Immusol, he worked under Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal, the first scientist to clone HIV, on RNA-based therapies for viral infections and degenerative disorders. At the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, under Dr. Jeffrey A. Kant, a pioneer of clinical molecular diagnostics, he used bioinformatics systems to study how genomic variation affects susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer, and he drafted the clinical protocol for a diagnostic BRCA1/2 assay. Somewhere along the way, he concluded that patent law was more forgiving than cell culture.

Before founding Torrey Pines Law Group in 2013, Kevin practiced at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (now Dentons) and founded and led the Life Sciences Practice at Spencer Fane. Over his career, he has represented Nasdaq-listed technology companies; global pharmaceutical, medical device, and specialty chemical manufacturers; leading venture capital firms; top research universities and private research institutes; and emerging companies at every stage of growth.

Kevin advises the University of California, San Diego’s Institute for the Global Entrepreneur and its MedTech Accelerator. He has been an academic advisor to entrepreneurship programs at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Law School, and Perelman School of Medicine, and he has served as an adjunct professor of biotechnology law at Washington University School of Law.

In his community, Kevin is a co-founder of The Spot, a nonprofit youth center being established in Escondido, California. The Spot will offer high school students a safe place to gather, instruction in computing and artificial intelligence, and structured physical activity. He also mentors in Project HERO, the one-to-one youth mentoring program of Escondido Education COMPACT, which has served local youth since 1989.

Education

J.D., University of Pittsburgh School of Law; Editor-in-Chief, Pittsburgh Journal of Technology Law & Policy
B.S., Biochemistry/Chemistry, University of California, San Diego; Undergraduate Research Scholar

Admissions

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Missouri
Security Clearance: OPM Secret (NACLC)(2012)(inactive)