Ralph Oman

Ralph Oman is the Pravel Professorial Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Patent Law at the George Washington University Law School and a fellow on the faculty of the law school’s Creative and Innovative Economy Center.

From 1985 to 1993, Oman was register of copyrights of the United States, the chief government official charged with administering the national copyright law. During his tenure as register, he helped move the United States into the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the oldest and most prestigious international copyright treaty, a goal sought by U.S. Registers for 100 years.

Prior to his appointment as register, Oman served as chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks. He previously clerked for Judge C. Stanley Blair of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. From 1994 to 2008, he was counsel to Dechert LLP.

He received his bachelor’s from Hamilton College and his JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where served as executive editor of the Journal of International Law.