Allison Krepel

Specialty / focus. Allison N. Krepel is a patent attorney in Polsinelli's St. Louis office whose practice is centered on patent prosecution and IP counseling rather than high-volume litigation. Per Polsinelli and Washington University Office of Technology Management profiles, she prepares and prosecutes U.S. and foreign patent applications in the medical device, biomaterials, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, nuclear medicine, environmental, and mechanical disciplines, and prepares non-infringement, invalidity, freedom-to-operate, and patentability opinions plus IP-transaction due diligence. Her single tracked litigation matter — the Candela Corporation et al. v. Tankovich case concerning multi-wavelength laser skin-treatment technology — is consistent with her biomedical engineering background.

Side preference / firm context. Her one tracked appearance is on the plaintiff side, where she represented Candela Corporation (an operating company) as IPR petitioner against patent owner Nikolai Tankovich. There is no tracked defense-side work, and her public practice description is prosecution/opinion-oriented, so she should not be characterized as a defense-oriented litigator on this record. Krepel joined Polsinelli as a scientist before becoming an associate and was elected shareholder in 2021. Before law school she was a licensing associate at Washington University's Office of Technology Management; she also volunteers with the USPTO Patent Pro Bono Program.

Notable case / IPR experience. The tracked case corresponds to IPR2023-00234, Candela Corporation v. Tankovich, challenging all 28 claims of U.S. Patent No. 10,675,481 (laser system for multiple-beam tissue therapy). The PTAB instituted review, and in a June 5, 2024 Final Written Decision found that Candela failed to prove any challenged claim unpatentable; Candela appealed to the Federal Circuit in August 2024. The parallel district court case, Tankovich v. Candela Corp., No. 1:22-cv-01458 (D. Del.), was stayed pending the IPR. Her only tracked appearance is before the PTAB, so she has direct IPR experience but the sample is too small to establish a regular IPR practice.

Bar / education. Krepel holds a formal education in biomedical engineering (per Polsinelli's published bio) and practices from Polsinelli's St. Louis office; a Missouri bar listing appears in FindLaw, though I could not independently verify her bar admission or law school from authoritative sources.