Roman Melnik
USC Gould School of Law

Roman Melnik is a solo patent law practitioner, with recognized expertise in counseling companies in connection with patent litigation, opinions of counsel and right of use analysis for accused infringers, enforcement analysis for patentees, Paragraph IV analysis for generic pharmaceutical companies under the Hatch-Waxman Act, and prior art searching.

Before starting his own practice, Melnik was a partner with Irell & Manella LLP, specializing in patent litigation and counseling. His patent cases have involved a wide array of technologies, including PVD, CVD, and wet techniques and tools for semiconductor substrate processing, the mathematics of magnetron design, pharmaceutical active ingredients and dosage forms, energy-recovery circuit design for storage media and plasma displays, construction of ultrasound medical devices, polymer chemistry, JPEG compression, traffic-control devices, and molecular biology.

Melnik graduated magna cum laude with an AB in Chemistry from Harvard University and received an MS in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught chemistry at Berkeley and Harvard and worked as a research chemist before earning a JD from Columbia Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review and taught civil procedure. He then clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

LLM Guide
June 5, 2023
Re: USC Gould School of Law

Law schools have been adapting to the increase in technological advancements, especially with the increased need for attorneys with the creation of AI. “Attorneys work on the front end, conducting threat assessments to ensure that their clients’ systems and data are protected, and on the back end, to navigate any legal issues that may arise as a result of the attacks," Gruzas said.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
April, 2023

"Fish, Whales, and a Blue Ethics for the Anthropocene: How Do We Think About the Last Wild Food in the Twenty-First Century?," 95:6 Southern California Law Review 1307-1343 (April 2023).

Robin Craig
April, 2023

"California Exceptionalism in the Colorado River: A Brief History and Implications for the Future."

Robin Craig
April, 2023

"Toward a Global Sustainable Development Agenda Built on Resilience" (with Murray W. Scown, Craig R. Allen, Lance Gunderson, David G. Angeler, Jorge H. Garcia, & Ahjond Garmestani), Global Sustainability (online publication April 2023).