Michael Risch
Biography
Michael Risch is an Associate Professor of Law at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he also directs the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Law Program. Professor Risch’s teaching and scholarship focuses on intellectual property and cyberspace law, with an emphasis on patents, trade secrets and information access.
Prior to joining the WVU faculty in 2007, Professor Risch was an Olin Fellow in Law at Stanford Law School from 2006-2007, and a partner at intellectual property boutique Russo & Hale LLP in Palo Alto, California. He remains of counsel at Russo & Hale; his practice centers around intellectual property litigation, licensing, auditing and protection; complex civil litigation; start-up and entrepreneurial counseling, and alternative dispute resolution.
Risch is also an avid computer programmer, and has customized, installed, and maintained portal web sites for both his own pursuits casesofinterest.com and for Russo & Hale LLP. He also developed an electronic mail plug-in that allowed early versions of Novell Groupwise email software to seamlessly use Pretty Good Privacy encryption; Network Associates, the maker of PGP software purchased the software in 1998. Risch is a co-author of a book on software development for Novell Groupwise.
Professor Risch graduated from Stanford University with honors and distinction in public policy and with distinction in quantitative economics; he was a national merit scholar there. He earned his law degree at the University of Chicago, where he graduated with high honors and was an Olin Fellow in Law & Economics and a Bradley Fellow in Law & Economics. He is a member of the state bars of West Virginia and California, the Northern District of California, and the Ninth and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal.