Ralph Oman
Ralph Oman is Pravel Professorial Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University Law School, where he has taught copyright law since 1993 and serves as a Fellow at its Creative and Innovative Economy Center. From 1994 to 2008, he was counsel in the intellectual property group in the Washington office of the international law firm, Dechert LLP. He has more than 33 years of experience in intellectual property law and legislation. Before entering private practice in 1994, Mr. Oman was the Register of Copyrights of the United States (1985-93), 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. Prior to his appointment as Register, Mr. Oman served as Chief Counsel for the Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. In his total of 10 years on Capitol Hill, he participated directly in many legislative enactments, most notably the 1976 revision of the copyright law. Mr. Oman is a graduate of Hamilton College (A.B., 1962) and Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1973), where he served as Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal of International Law.
