Steven Highlander’s practice focuses on portfolio management for universities, non-profits and small to mid-sized corporate clients. Preparation and filing of patent applications, as well as prosecution of these cases, makes up the bulk of his docket. He also has considerable opinion experience for patentability, validity, infringement and inventorship disputes. Dr. Highlander has also been involved in over 20 interference proceedings, including several garnering Federal Circuit review.

Disciplines with which Dr. Highlander is familiar include organic chemistry, gene therapy, viral delivery systems, immunoassays, food science, PCR technology, cellular immunology, chemotherapy, drug screening, animal and plant breeding programs, cancer diagnosis, monoclonal antibodies, radio-therapy and radio-imaging, medical devices, tumor suppressors, and lymphokines.

Dr. Highlander’s graduate work involved structure-function studies on herpesviral surface proteins. As such, he is familiar with such disciplines as cell biology, protein biochemistry, molecular biology (including recombinant DNA work), gene regulation, genetics, immunology (including immunodiagnostics and immunotherapy), pharmacology, medicine, and viral pathology.

Dr. David Parker plays both offense and defense when protecting clients’ intellectual property assets. Dr. Parker places a premium on the strategy and management of intellectual property portfolios.

From the moment of innovation to the ultimate marketplace, Dr. Parker maps out a course designed not only to provide protection for future manufacturing and marketing, but also to impede competitors from entering the game, thereby ensuring his clients have a clear path to market.

Should a legal action become necessary to safeguard a client, Dr. Parker has the litigation experience to take the case to trial.

In addition to being a talented doctor and attorney, Dr. Parker is a multi-faceted individual with a wide range of interests. A devoted father of three and active in his church, he is also an accomplished voice student, an impressive dancer, a dedicated soccer coach, an avid golfer and history buff.

Mark Voges’ practice focuses on patent prosecution, portfolio management and opinion work related to pharmaceuticals, chemicals, polymers, materials science, and biotechnology.

Prior to practicing patent law, Mark Voges spent five years working as a chemist and a manager for the pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer AG. He has significant experience with regulatory compliance, chemical process design and scale-up, and plant management.

Mark is also a co-inventor of two United States patents (as well as foreign equivalents) for novel catalysts in the areas of olefin polymerization and homogeneous hydrogenation. These inventions resulted from two separate post-doctoral collaborations: (1) Brookhaven National Lab, DuPont, and the Department of Energy, (2) Borealis AS and the University of Oslo (Norway).

Amanda Schnepp, Ph.D., J.D. joined Parker Highlander after completing a Ph.D. program in Molecular Biology at Vanderbilt University, a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Virology at Vanderbilt University, and a post-doctoral fellowship in drug development at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Prior to her graduate studies, Amanda earned a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a degree from the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science based at the University of North Texas. Her research experience at St. Jude focused on high-throughput screening of spliceosome inhibitors for cancer therapy and anti-influenza drugs, both in close collaboration with medicinal organic chemists. During her post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt, Amanda developed an innovative confocal microscopy-based assay to quantitatively analyze the binding of broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV-1 virions. This research had profound implications for the relationship between maturation of the viral core and the exposure of broadly neutralizing regions of the HIV-1 surface glycoprotein during the HIV-1 life cycle. During her dissertation research at Vanderbilt, where she was awarded the prestigious University Graduate Fellowship, Amanda quantitatively analyzed mRNA splice variant production and identified the biochemical mechanism of an Isolated Growth Hormone Deficiency Type-2 causing mutation.

S. Reid Long, Ph.D. joined Parker Highlander after finishing a graduate program in chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin. Before starting his graduate studies, Reid received a dual bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Plan II. During his graduate program, Reid worked in the area of molecular recognition looking at the driving forces behind molecular attractions and the development of functional molecules assemblies. As an organic chemist, Reid has extensive experience synthesizing and characterizing small molecules. Since joining Parker Highlander, Reid has worked on the drafting and prosecution of patents focus on numerous different areas of chemistry including small molecule therapeutics, diagnostics and polymers. Reid has also worked on patentability and freedom to operate analysis and has experience managing portfolios of patent families.

Chris Spence, J.D., received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering cum laude from Texas A&M University in 1991. After working as an engineer for Celanese Chemicals for 9 years, he attended The University of Texas School of Law, where he graduated with honors in 2003. Upon graduation from law school, Chris began his legal career with Conley Rose, P.C. in Houston and later joined Fulbright & Jaworski LLP (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in Austin in 2006. His legal practice focuses on patent prosecution and portfolio development.

Geoff Findlay, Ph.D., joined Fulbright in 2003 where he worked as a patent agent and technical advisor for nine years. Geoff holds an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Williams College and a Ph.D. in molecular neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. Geoff is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society and was awarded scholar athlete honors during his undergraduate studies. Geoff was awarded multiple competitive fellowships and grants, and his work has been featured in journals including The Journal of Neuroscience. Geoff also worked at a Phase I lab and performed cancer research. As a patent professional, Geoff has focused on biotechnology patent prosecution, patentability searches, and freedom-to-operate analyses for a wide range of technologies including next-generation sequencing, cancer therapies, antimicrobial compositions, polymers, small molecule therapeutics, cartilage technologies, imaging, antibody therapeutics, stem cell technologies, pharmaceutical compositions, and other biotechnologies.

Monica Mann, Ph.D. joined Parker Highlander after completing a Biomedical Science graduate program at the University of Texas Health Science Center in the area of cancer biology and a post-doctoral fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Prior to her graduate studies, Monica obtained a B.S. in Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University. During her graduate program, Monica worked in the area of understanding the mechanism of resistance to hormonal therapy in breast cancer and developing methods to overcome this resistance. Since joining Parker Highlander, Monica has focused on patentability searches, freedom-to-operate analyses, and biotechnology patent prosecution.

Caroline Hamilton, M.A. received a bachelor’s degree in Biology cum laude from Agnes Scott College in 2000 and a master’s degree in Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. Prior to joining Parker Highlander in 2013, Caroline worked in house for Idera Pharmaceuticals for 5 years in Cambridge, MA. At Idera, Caroline managed the prosecution for a portion of the company portfolio dealing with RNA agonists for Toll-like Receptors 7 and 8. Caroline also assisted Idera with patentability searches and competitive intelligence. Caroline became a registered Patent Agent in 2006 and has a paralegal certificate from Northeastern University in Boston.

Elizabeth Gratton, Ph.D. joined Parker Highlander in 2021 after obtaining her graduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Austin. Prior to graduate school, Elizabeth received a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Spanish from The Pennsylvania State University. Before beginning her graduate studies, Elizabeth was employed as an Intramural Research Training Fellow at the National Institutes of Health where she worked on developing synthetic and process methods for the production of a particular small molecule of interest. During graduate school, Elizabeth synthesized and studied the DNA binding patterns of naphthalene diimide intercalators and designed and investigated the stability of DNA sequences containing novel unnatural base pairs. At Parker Highlander, Elizabeth has focused on the drafting and prosecution of patent applications related to various areas of chemistry, including small-molecule therapeutics and biochemical devices.

Melissa joined Parker Highlander after completing a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin and an M.S. in Organic Chemistry at The University of Arkansas. Prior to her graduate studies, Melissa earned a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Biology from John Brown University and was awarded several prestigious research fellowships/awards. Her graduate research experience at the University of Arkansas focused on the total synthesis of the lead anti-cancer compound ipomoeassin F, as well as synthetic and computational methodology development. At UT Austin, Melissa studied the recombination of polyketide synthase modules to produce novel chiral building blocks for small molecule synthesis. She also identified gatekeeping residues in polyketide synthase active sites and performed domain docking studies, using bioinformatics and computational biology techniques. Her research was influential in the development of polyketide synthase engineering strategies related to the production of antibiotics and other biologically active compounds.

Logan Spaller, PhD joined Parker Highlander in 2024. Prior to his tenure with Parker Highlander, Logan served at the University of Texas at Austin’s Technology Transfer Office, where he played a key role in negotiating licensing deals for UT's intellectual property portfolio. His responsibilities included managing the university's IP portfolio, conducting patentability assessments, and making strategic filing decisions.

Logan holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During his doctoral studies, he focused on understanding the mechanisms by which the proteasome, the primary protein degradation machinery in cells, selects substrates for degradation, leading to the design of new targeted protein degradation therapeutics.

At Parker Highlander, Logan is working under the supervision of patent attorneys and patent agents to draft patent applications across various domains of biology, biochemistry, and biomedical sciences, including gene therapy and vaccine development.

Karen joined Parker Highlander as a paralegal with more than 35 years of intellectual property experience in U.S. and international patent prosecution, trademarks, copyright and domain name disputes. Prior to joining our team, Karen worked at a major Pharmaceutical Company for 8 years as an electronic discovery paralegal working on their Hatch Waxman generic drug patent litigation cases. Karen’s practice currently focuses on U.S. and international prosecution matters.

Prior to joining Parker Highlander, Casey Gorman was a paralegal with Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP in Austin, Texas, where she spent over five years working on U.S. and international patent prosecution matters. Casey’s practice currently focuses on international matters, but continues to handle U.S. prosecution as well.

Jennifer joined Parker Highlander at its inception in 2012. Prior to that, she gained over 7 years of experience as a patent paralegal with the law firms of Fulbright & Jaworksi LLP (Austin, TX) and Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto (Costa Mesa, CA). She has extensive experience in U.S. patent prosecution providing an integral support role in assisting attorneys and patent agents with filing patent applications, preparing and filing formal documents, responses, Information Disclosure Statements, and petitions, reviewing granted patents for errors, calculating patent term, and corresponding with clients and inventors.

Prior to becoming a patent paralegal, Jennifer spent several years performing background investigations for due diligence reports for global clients including investment banks, private equity funds, and large public accounting firms.

Petya joined Parker Highlander as a paralegal with a combined experience of 10 years in the United States and abroad. Before joining the team, Petya worked at another Austin-based Intellectual Property law firm where she gained experience in U.S. and international patent prosecution as well as U.S. trademark prosecution managing the intellectual property portfolio of large corporations. Prior to relocating to the United States Petya worked at an Intellectual Property law firm in Munich, Germany, where she gained experience in German and EPO patent and trademark prosecution and litigation. Petya’s current fields are U.S. and international prosecution matters.

Prior to joining Parker Highlander, Christopher served as a Legal Secretary for 13 years at the Austin office of Fulbright & Jaworski LLP and since 1990 was a Legal Secretary for several law firms in Dallas and Austin. His experience includes Litigation, Patents, Trademark and Copyright Law.

Michelle provides paralegal support for many of the firm’s clients. Her duties include handling of filings and correspondence for U.S. patent prosecution matters as well as client annuities.

Julie has over three decades of experience supporting intellectual property attorneys and patent agents, previously at Arnold, White & Durkee and Fulbright & Jaworski, and now at Parker Highlander. She is well-versed in filing procedures with the USPTO as well as docketing and tracking of both U.S. and foreign patent deadlines.

Prior to joining Parker Highlander, Christy accumulated over 13 years of legal experience in both patent and trademark prosecution. She spent the last 8 years as a Sr. Docketing Specialist with the Austin office of Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP.

Ollie works in the docketing department in supporting the firm’s attorneys and paralegals, including processing USPTO actions, foreign correspondence and daily docket resolution. He graduated from Texas State University in 2020 with a B.S. in Mathematics.

Cheri joins the Parker Highlander group with over 38 years of accounting experience including 26 years in the area of law. Cheri is the former controller of both Clark, Thomas & Winters P.C. and Duggins Wren Mann & Romero LLP. At Parker Highlander PLLC, Cheri manages the day to day activities of the firm.

Comes to Parker Highlander with 15+ years of professional experience in human resources and accounting.