Tennille Christensen is an attorney who specializes in advising start-ups on intellectual property issues and negotiating and drafting technology-related transactions.
Why Technology?
She couldn’t help it. She’s always loved math, science, and engineering. After receiving a B.S. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley (2 classes short of a second degree in mechanical engineering), she spent her first career as a jane-of-all-technical trades as an engineer, code-monkey, technical writer, and analyst for an academic lab and multiple start-up companies in the fields of enterprise middleware, Video-on-Demand, TV-over-IP, databases, social networking, pharmaceuticals, orthopedic biomechanics, and biotechnology.
Why Law?
She’s always loved words, language, and communication. She first entered the practice of law as a patent agent. However, she was constantly reading about and fascinated by non-patent-prosecution legal issues as well. One of the biggest areas that interested her, software copyrights and legal issues associated with the open source software community, is the reason she became an attorney.
The day the Supreme Court issued Eldred v. Ashcroft, Tennille called a lawyer friend because she wanted to talk about it. The friend said,
Enough. People don’t read Supreme Court cases for fun. This is not a hobby. You need to go to law school.
And so, she enrolled at U.C. Hastings for her J.D. and embarked upon her transition from engineer to lawyer. Prior to and during law school, Tennille was a clerk at a nationally renowned patent prosecution firm and filed multiple patent applications, office action responses, and petitions-to-make-special, while she managed the day-to-day minutiae of several patent families, and collaborated on litigation claims charts, defense and assertion strategies, and infringement and validity opinion drafting.
In 2005, Tennille externed full-time for the Chief Judge of the Northern District of California, Vaughn R. Walker. During her time in his chambers, she witnessed weekly pro-se motion calendars and motions in limine, as well as several trials from pre-trial conference through resolution. She also observed 3 Markman hearings and was involved in drafting several Markman opinions.
Since 2006 (first at the firm of Gunderson Dettmer and now managing her own law firm) Tennille has been providing intellectual property, commercial contracts, and business law advice, counseling, drafting, and negotiation help to technology start-ups and individuals.
Tennille has represented over 300 technology start-ups and individuals, has performed the IP work in over 100 venture-side financings, has worked on the IP issues in 3 IPO filings, and has done the IP work (negotiation, diligence, and clean-up) of over 40 mergers and acquisitions, both buy-side and sell-side. Additionally, Tennille has negotiated and drafted everything from the super-small to multi-million dollar complex commercial transactions, including, but not limited to:
- Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret licenses
- Web Forms: Privacy Policies, Terms of Use/Service, Click-Through Binding Contracts
- Open Source Contracts: Contribution Agreements as well as analysis and drafting of employment, consulting, licensing, investment, and merger documents focused on Open Source issues.
- Sales Forms: Order Forms, Master Purchase Agreements, Purchase Orders, Standard Terms
- Consulting, Professional Service, and other service and confidentiality agreements
- Software-As-A-Service agreements (both click-through and signed)
- Joint ownership of IP agreements and related back-licenses
- Collections of inter-working on-line and paper contracts to govern various business models
- General and specific confidentiality agreements
- Supply, manufacturing, and distribution agreements (including through multiple tiers of distribution)
- Materials Transfer Agreements
- Non-Recurring Engineering contracts and Development Agreements
Tennille’s publications and public speaking experience include:
–Trademarks: A Start Up View — UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, April 9, 2009
–Cleaning the Slate: Resolving IP Conflicts in Company Formations — UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, February 11, 2010
-Transactional IP and Privacy Issues for Early Stage Startups Entering the US Market — Stanford/Ko-Founder Labs, September 19, 2012
–IP issues for Startups in Silicon Valley — Ko-Founder Labs, November 21, 2013
–Free and Open Source Software Overview and Commercial Best Practices — Silicon Legal Strategy, March 4, 2014
–The 13th Annual Conference on Recent Developments in Intellectual Property Law and Policy — Golden Gate University Law School, February 20, 2105
–Intellectual Property Law for Engineering and Science Students — University of Alaska, Fairbanks, October 12, 2015.
–Steering the Technology Startup: Issues for In-House and Outside Counsel Advising Technology Startups — San Francisco Bar Association Barristers Annual Meeting, November 6, 2015.
–US Copyright Case Developments and F/OSS — Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 14X), January 22, 2016.
—Steering the Technology Startup: Issues for In-House and Outside Counsel Advising Technology Startups — San Francisco Bar Association, June 6, 2016.
Copyleft After Google, The San Francisco Daily Journal, Vol. 102, No. 109, June 7, 2016.
–Caselaw: APIs/CLIs: The current state of US copyright law, Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 15X), March 3, 2017
–Employment Contracts – Addressing The Needs of Engineers & Companies, Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 16X), March 9, 2018
–Making Licenses Understandable to All, Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 16X), March 9, 2018
The Startup’s Guide to Non-Disclosure Agreements
IP Overview for new engineering graduates, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, April 3, 2018.
Why Garden?
The majority of Tennille’s clients are trying to grow a technology business. They are starting from scratch and tending, caring, and dealing with the delays and setbacks that come on a day-to-day basis.
Much like growing a new technology business, tending a garden is hard work. But, in addition to law and technology, it is one of Tennille’s passions, and she spends much of her spare time working, reading, learning, and doing things in the garden in the hopes of it bearing fruit she can enjoy and share with others. In particular, she’s found that many of the lessons from the cyclical nature of gardening are applicable to the life-cycle of start up companies.
But most of all, Tennille likes to work with dedicated and passionate entrepreneurs, and it is her hope that they will want to work with a dedicated and passionate attorney. She’s passionate about technology, the law, and her garden.
Also, the pictures add a nice splash of color to what would otherwise be a very dry website.
Hi Tennille, I was browsing over several sites and stumbled on your page. Your journey from being an engineer to becoming a lawyer is pretty extraordinary and inspiring. I have been contemplating over my career recently and your story just moved me to doing what I love most, treating kids. I will take up pediatrics on the next semester. Thanks for your story.
Thanks, Bailey! I’m very glad to hear my story inspired you. Best Wishes for you on your transition to pediatrics!