Donald M. Prather PhD

Biography

Don’s practice focuses on preparing and prosecuting domestic and international patent applications for clients in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and biotechnology industries. Don also assists clients on IP matters, including non-infringement and invalidity opinions, freedom-to-operate, litigation strategy, due diligence, Hatch-Waxman/ANDA litigation, and strategic patent portfolio reviews.

For clients in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, Don advises on and prosecutes patents for anticancer therapeutics, kinase inhibitors, chemoprotection agents, infectious disease therapeutics, antivirals, anti-inflammatory agents, polymers, pharmaceutical formulations, insecticides, and agrochemicals. For clients in the life science and biotechnology industries, Don’s experience includes therapeutic antibodies, recombinant protein therapeutics, RNAi therapeutics, gene therapy, human vaccines, veterinary vaccines, and in vitro diagnostics.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Don spent several years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Licensing Associate with the Technology Transfer Office, where he drafted and negotiated intellectual property licenses with industry partners ranging from small biotechnology start-ups to major multi-national pharmaceutical corporations. During his tenure at the CDC, Don attended Georgia State University College of Law, where he was the recipient of the Intellectual Property Scholarship, an Associate Editor for the Georgia State University Law Review, and graduated with honors (magna cum laude).

Don began his studies in Chemistry at Eckerd College, where he was awarded the Presidential Scholarship, had a 4.0 GPA, was named the Outstanding Student in Natural Sciences and was given the Mark J. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Student in Chemistry. Don continued his studies at Harvard University where he received his PhD in Genetics. While at Harvard, his thesis, “Characterization of the transcription elongation factors Elf1 and TFIIS in S. cerevisiae” focused on the mechanisms of gene regulation and the role of novel transcription elongation factors in regulating gene expression.