Ted Theofrastous chairs KJK’s Intellectual Property, Technology & New Ventures Practice Group as well as the firm’s AI Strategy, Risk Management & Compliance practice. He is an experienced intellectual property and corporate attorney who advises companies, investors, and research institutions on the legal and business questions raised by technology and innovation.
For more than 25 years, Ted has handled integrated intellectual property and corporate matters across the full arc of a technology business: IP strategy and protection, technology transactions and licensing, venture formation and finance, securities and fund work, mergers and acquisitions, and the commercialization of complex innovation. He counsels clients across a wide range of technologies, including life sciences, data communications, information technology, alternative energy, and advanced materials, on both the legal and the business dimensions of their work.
He works with large and small companies, non-profits, and research institutions to build governance, policy, and commercialization structures that hold up in practice. His technology transfer experience runs deep across the advanced research community, where he has advised a range of institutional clients on legally compliant approaches to government- and industry-funded research, licensing, and equity transactions.
As chair of the firm’s AI practice group, Ted advises clients across the lifecycle of AI adoption, from governance and policy through contracts, disclosure, and disputes. His work centers on strategic risk management: helping clients capture the value of AI while keeping its use defensible. He brings an engineer and operator’s perspective to that work, and a habit of testing the technologies and platforms his clients are adopting on his own work rather than merely advising on them from a distance.
Ted also created and chairs Ohio Invents (ohioinvents.org), the Ohio Patent Pro Bono Program, a network of pro bono intellectual property experts that connects under-resourced independent inventors and small businesses with volunteer patent attorneys, operated in partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Before joining KJK, Ted founded a solo legal practice and an affiliated technology strategy consulting firm, leveraging his practice experience gained in the trenches of a large international law firm. He previously served as managing director and fund counsel to an investment firm and as Chief Commercialization Counsel at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Ted earned his J.D., cum laude, from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and holds a B.A. in history, magna cum laude, from Marlboro College (later merged into Emerson College). He holds long-standing adjunct faculty appointments at Case Western Reserve University, including in its schools of engineering, medicine, and law, where he also serves as Distinguished Practitioner in Residence. He is a director and co-founding faculty member of CWRU’s FUSION Certificate Program, a multidisciplinary graduate certificate that approaches technology commercialization through the combined perspectives of law, management, and science. Ted writes and speaks frequently on artificial intelligence, intellectual property, technology commercialization, regulation, and venture finance.
Outside his practice, Ted is a SCUBA diver, mountain biker, and long-haul road cyclist, with side interests in genealogy and cooking. He is a member of the Chevaliers du Tastevin, the international Burgundy wine society headquartered in Bourgogne, France.
Every Ohio public school district must adopt an artificial intelligence policy by July 1, 2026. Adopting the state’s model policy will make a district compliant. It will not, by itself, make the district safe. This analysis is written for the people who have to live...
Part One of a Five-Article Series on AI and the Law The short answer: AI does not change the fundamental dynamics of managing liability and discoverability. The duties of confidentiality, the rules of attorney-client privilege, and the work product doctrine all...
Every company wants to innovate. We have all heard the stories about the engineer who stumbles onto something remarkable in the lab, or the sales team member who devises an ingenious workaround that saves millions. But most companies have no systematic way to capture,...
